Living with her husband in occupied Germany in the 1950s, Ethel Gathers is a proud wife of an American serviceman and always looking for something to do. She soon discovers a nearby orphanage filled with the abandoned children of local German women and the African American soldiers with whom they had brief affairs. While Ethel and her husband personally adopt a handful of kids, they're determined to help these children find homes back in the U.S., and Ethel begins reaching out to all of her contacts at African American newspapers, churches, and everywhere else to accomplish her mission. Ethel's tale is woven together with the stories of Sophie, a Black girl attending a prestigious private (and mostly white) school in 1965, and Ozzie, a Black serviceman in 1948 Germany who falls in love with a German woman.
Braiding these three stories together creates a captivating novel that is based on a real phenomenon of Black American families adopting mixed race children from Germany in the 1950s. All of the stories are compelling, and while the reader may expect each story to go one way, the somehow-realistic twists keep us guessing. Indeed, the least believable element of the whole book is how many kids Ethel and her husband adopt, and that part is based on an actual woman: Mabel Treadwell Grammer, who, with her husband, adopted 12 mixed-race children from German orphanages. It's a fascinating book, and I was riveted the whole time while reading it.
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