Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson

In this episode of The Jane Healey Happy Hour, Jane Healey speaks with New York Times bestselling author Sadeqa Johnson about her new novel Keeper of Lost Children. Johnson shares the little-known history that inspired the book, including the real story of journalist and adoption advocate Mabel Grammer, who helped place more than 500 mixed-race “brown babies” born in post–World War II Germany into American homes.

Transcript

Jane 0:02

Welcome to the newly branded Jane Healey. Happy Hour, formerly historical Happy Hour, the podcast that explores new and exciting novels of all genres. I'm your host Jane Healey, and in today's episode, we welcome New York Times bestselling author, Sika Johnson. To discuss her latest novel Keeper of Lost Children. You've got an awesome poster there. Which book list described as a moving exploration of hope, courage, and the ties that bind through generations? It released on February 10th. Welcome, Sadika, and congratulations. Happy launch.

Sadeqa 0:35

Oh, thank you. And today is my one month book, baby Birthday.

Jane 0:40

Amazing. I know. Yeah. I said thank you for coming because I know like you, you must be crazed right now. Yeah, thank you so much for doing this. I'm gonna do a quick bio and then, okay. Like I said, I have a bunch of questions. Everyone chime in about where you're from and what you're reading, and then towards the end, we'll, if you have any questions for Sadika, put them in the chat or the q and a. Okay. Z Zika Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including The House of Eve, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Reese's Book Club selection and yell, and her novel Yellow Wife. Her most recent novel, keeper of Lost Children is on, was on, came on sale February, 2026. Originally from Philadelphia. Sika Johnson currently resides near Richmond, Virginia. You can learn more about her@sika.net or follow her on Insta at Sika. Says again, welcome.

Sadeqa 1:28

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's lovely to be here. Appreciate the invitation.

Jane 1:32

Oh, so happy to have you.

Sadeqa 1:33

And it seems like you have such wonderful people in the audience. Hello everyone. We see you. Thank you so much for being here tonight.

Jane 1:41

I ha some of these women have been on like every single one. Marsha and Christine and Michelle thank you all for showing up every, all the time. It's awesome.

Sadeqa 1:49

Yes.

Jane 1:50

So I, I obviously, I write historical fiction too, and I'm a fan of lesser known stories of women in history. And just when I thought I didn't, you know what I, I'd heard a lot of, I've heard, I've written her story, world War II Fiction. Just when you think all the stories, like this story blew me away. I had never heard about this. I never heard about the woman who it's based on. So talk about the premise of this novel and how you decided to write it.

Sadeqa 2:16

I always say that stories, they choose me and I just have to be in the receptive mode to receive them. I was working on the House of Eve. I was, I think on the sixth or seventh draft, and I was tucked away at a little writing retreat trying to get those edits done. You know how that is at the last minute. You have a short amount of time to get a lot of work. Done. And so I took myself away and I'm always writing and researching. And I think I popped into my Google search bar like Orphans Unwanted Children, which were themes in the House of Eve as well, and up popped a woman named Mabel Grammar. And Mabel Grammar is an American or was an American journalist. She married a chief warranted officer in the United States Army, and she followed him over to Germany. They were stationed in Manheim. He worked a lot. She felt very isolated. She didn't speak the language. She was a devout Catholic. She also was a little bit sad because she was unable to have children because of a childhood illness. But because she was a devout Catholic, she was often in church and these nuns came up to her and they noticed how sad she was and they invited her back to the orphanage. And when she got there, she discovered a gaggle of mixed race children in the orphanage. A little known consequence of World War II was that there was a. A lot of African American soldiers that went into Germany, they had relationships with German women. We know what happens when relationships happen. Babies are born and these babies were a product of this union, and they were the ones who were left behind.

Jane 3:57

Just incredible. And so I wanna talk, I love talking about research. Let's start with Mabel Grammars. You know how you discovered her, she was this adoption champion, civil rights worker, journalist. What she did in, in, in connecting to these children and getting them adopted was extraordinary. So talk about the research into her and then I have another question about the other overall research for this book.

Sadeqa 4:20

What I learned about her was that she, once she discovered these children, she decided that something needed to be done. And so she started a one woman adoption agency where she made it her mission to place these children. She's responsible. For moving over 500 of these biracial children into American homes, both in the Army over in Germany, but also bringing them over to America. She and her husband adopted 12 of these children themselves, which is incredible. I have three kids. I cannot imagine. 12 miles to feed. But they did, they adopted 12 of these children, because she was a journalist. She pinned what she called the Brown Baby Plan, and they were, she wrote these articles with a step by step guide on how to adopt these children by proxy. And she had'em printed in American newspapers. It was phenomenal. I, she didn't have the resources that we had, but she got so much done.

Jane 5:21

Amazing. Yeah. I, again I just can't believe you. I had never heard of her. I'd never heard of this story. So talk about like your research process overall and like what sources you used that, what were like invaluable. Was there anything that surprised you? Anything like that?

Sadeqa 5:37

I was able to find some articles that Mabel Grammar wrote herself which was very helpful. She, I followed those articles. I was able to get her voice and get a sense of who she was through those articles. I took a trip to Germany. My husband and I went over for about 10 days and we went to Frankfurt. We went to Manheim, which is where the US Army base used to be, and which. The story takes place. It was the Benjamin Franklin village, and so we walked the village. The base had been given back to the Germans at this point, but there were still some structures that were there that had been there during the time of my story. I walked through the cemeteries because for the German aspect of the story, I wanted to make sure that I got the names and the flavor correct. Spent a lot of time at the Library of Virginia. I'm so fortunate that I don't live far from there, and it is. Such a resource for all of my historical fiction. I could always check out books and get periodicals and things of that nature.

Jane 6:33

Excellent. So this story, so you have one character, Ethel, who is based directly on Naval grammars. But it, it's told from three different perspectives, which I was like, so that's so challenging and impressive.

Sadeqa 6:45

Oh, it was so challenging. It was so challenging.

Jane 6:48

I was reading like how so let's talk about the two other characters perspective. So there's Ozzy Phillips who joins the newly. Desegregated Army in 1948 and is stationed in Germany and falls for a German woman. And then there's also Sophia Clarks, who her storyline takes place in 65. She's a black teen growing up on a Maryland far farm with pretty terrible parents. Yeah. Yeah. So talk about these two characters and how, why you decided to weave in their stories as part of the overall.

Sadeqa 7:19

I knew that Ozzy's story was important because when I think about the thousands of World War II books that have been written documentaries, films that you see, the black soldier is largely left out of the narrative. And I knew that it was important for him to have a voice because in these larger places he did not have a voice. And so it was important for me to write his story. I saw my great uncle who's 94 years old at my family reunion, and he was in the Air Force around the time that Ozzy is in the Army. And so I started picking his brain about what it was like, for the American soldiers, black Americans going over to Europe. During the Double V campaign fighting for freedom, for the Europeans when they didn't have freedom at home because of Jim Crow. And so I thought it was important to weave all of this into his character. And Ozzy was the character that sort of came into my office. He sat down next to me and he said, Saddiqui, let me tell you my story. It's gonna be good, it's gonna be bad, it's gonna be ugly, but it's going to be truthful. And I thought it was gonna be difficult for me to write a male character. I was very afraid. But once I got into it, we had a connection. It almost felt like he was a family member and I was telling his story. And then for Sophia, I have this propensity of writing these young girls the sort of on the coming age moment, but there's, they have this. Idea that they want their lives to be better, but there are all these things holding them back. You see it in Yellow Wife with Bebe. You see it in the house of IV with Ruby. And now in the keeper of Lost children. Sophia is this girl who, like you said, is living on this farm. She is. Terrible parents. She really hates her life, but she's given this opportunity to go to a boarding school. And this changes her life in a lot of ways, but when she gets there, she realizes that she's one of the first African Americans and that she's not only there for an education, but she's there to integrate the school, which comes with a host of issues and problems for her and her friends. So yeah, these two characters I thought were very important to add to the story.

Jane 9:34

So interesting. So I, this is like a two part question regarding doing th you know, three narrative threads. What is your writing process like? Are you a plotter or pants or I ask every author that comes on, do you plot it out? Do you write by the see pants? Is a somewhere in between. What's your process?

Sadeqa 9:52

So I'm definitely a planner. I I start a novel with an idea and then I talk it through with my agent and she says, go write a synopsis. And so I write a synopsis that has a very loose, beginning, middle, and end. And then I sit down to write it. I break the story up and. Whatever parts, if it's gonna be three parts, this book happens to be four. I tried to make it three, but it was hard, and so it became four parts. So I break it up and I have an idea of, I know my character's gonna start here. These are a couple of things that are gonna happen, but by the end of part one, we need to be right here. And that's my flow for this novel because I was juggling the 3.0 views. What I did was I spent a week or two with each character and only that character, so that I only had their voice in my head. And so I would write Sophia for maybe five or six chapters. Same thing for Ozzy, and then the same thing for Ethel. And then I would literally print the pages and sit down on my off office floor and pick the chapters up to see where the connections were and how I could bind it together like a story.

Jane 11:01

Okay. That was the second part of my question. I'm like how did you, how'd you do it? How'd you how'd you weave it all together like that? Yeah. Because that is not easy. And I'd read a couple of interviews that you did and when you talked about that so well done. So when this is another one about, writing, when writing historical fiction, how do you balance. The historical facts of the time and the fiction elements of the story. Are there any strict rules you have and like you adhere to, or, how do you do, how do you balance that?

Sadeqa 11:29

I don't have any strict rules. I think I'm doing all the research, like the majority of the research I'm doing upfront and the research informs my plot point. So I do try to stay as close to history as possible particularly if I'm basing it on someone true, like a maple grammar. I try to stay as close as possible. But when I sit down to write the story, it's like the research is I've done all of that. It's inside of my body. It takes a back seat so that I can make space for the characters to come through me so they could guide me and let me know what they're supposed to do next. So it's a, I don't know, it's a mey thing that happens. I don't really have control over it. I just let it happen and let it flow.

Jane 12:10

And with this one, has it gotten. With, so this is your sixth novel. I always ask this too.

Sadeqa 12:16

Sixth novel.

Jane 12:17

Yeah. Has it gotten easier, like sixth? No,

Sadeqa 12:20

no. It doesn't get easier. It's like raising children. It does not get easier. Everyone you add to your bunch comes with a whole host of personalities and challenges and all the things, so no, it doesn't. As a matter of fact, this one definitely felt like my hardest book. My agent kept saying. Squa, you're writing your most ambitious book. And in the beginning I was like, why does she keep saying that? Like I'm just writing a novel. And then halfway through I was like, okay, I get it. This is really hard. So it doesn't, for me, for this book, it didn't get easier. Maybe book number seven, I hope maybe Lucky seven will just drip off my fingers. Yes.

Jane 13:02

Regarding that, like your kind of trajectory, I wanna read this. I didn't realize you came from a self-publishing background originally. So you've had this amazing trajectory from like self-published author. Therese Witherspoon Pick a New York Times bestseller. And you're a public speaker. I was checking out your website and you give this talk entitled Manifesto, how Belief turns pages into bestsellers. And I loved some of the points that you make in that talk. You gave a summary of the talk, so can you share about your publishing journey and kind of the lessons you share in that talk?'cause I thought that was amazing.

Sadeqa 13:36

My publishing journey started off way, way long ago. I started off working in publishing. I was a publicist at Scholastic Books, and it was there that I was surrounded by books. I had always loved writing. I was a theater major and communications major in college, and so I was writing and poetry and all of that. And so when I. I had my first job, it came together where it was like, okay, I'm gonna write this novel. I love to read. I think I can do this. So I worked on my novel for years. My first novel for years. I made contacts in the business. I knew agents, I knew publishers, I knew editors. I was in. Town cars with some of the New York Times bestsellers of the day, Catherine Coulter, Nevada Bar Bishop TD Jakes, and I was like, p picking their brain. What is this? What's your writing schedule? Like, how does this feel? How does that feel? Because I was gathering information so that when it was my turn, I was ready to do, I was ready to be an author. Lo and behold, I quit my job. I was having my first son. I told my husband, I said I'm gonna quit my job. I'm gonna take care of our son and I'm going to be a New York Times bestselling author. And he is wait. You're gonna quit your job. That's all he heard. I was like, yes, just trust me. It's gonna work out. But it wasn't a straight and narrow path. Had an agent, she took the novel out to market. When I had this plan, I just had the one kid, by the time she took my book out, loving a carry on bag, she had 10 rejections from top tier editors. The 11th editor said, I'm interested in the book. Let me think about it. Over the weekend at this point, I had three little children, so you can see how much time went by. And she came back to me on that Monday and she said, I'm so sorry I can't buy her book. And my agent said, why don't we wait six months and see what we can do? But I had already been waiting for years and so my husband convinced me like, we should just start our own publishing company. A small one. You have all this background in publishing, let's put it to use and get this book out. And so we did. And we literally took love to carry on bag up and down the East coast. We were selling'em out the back of our trunk, had these three kids tagging along. I dressed them in t-shirts that said, buy my mommy's book, and I was literally hand selling my book to anyone who would give me the time of day, and that was really my foundation. I think the biggest lesson there is that you can't give up on your dreams because the miracle was just right around the corner. Because once I got through all of that, my editor then became my agent, and she was able to take my next book to. To, to the big publishing houses, and I got three offers. So I went from no offers on my first book to three offers. I was able to sit and choose. Who I wanted to work with, on my second and my third book. And so there was just a lot of me just staying the course and not giving up. I'm big on vision boards, at the beginning of the year I plot out what I'm trying to manifest and bring into my life. I have a word that sort of shapes, what I'm trying to do. And I stayed of course.

Jane 16:41

It's so inspiring and I love talking about author's past.'cause ev it's never like a straight line, it's always long and winding and I love that you started I guess I miss that you not only self-publish, you started your own publishing company, which is even more amazing. So I, yeah, I just love that you teach writing workshops. And you have one coming up in France, which I was like, oh God, that sounds amazing. In a couple months. I'm so jealous.

Sadeqa 17:07

Yeah. Next month actually, I'm so not ready, but I'm excited.

Jane 17:11

Great. What is some of the best writing advice you give to aspiring authors who wanna write fiction?

Sadeqa 17:18

The first thing I say is keep your butt in the seat. Writing is writing right? So we spend a lot of time in our brain saying how we don't have enough time to write. We have all these things to do. I know I am guilty right now. I have not been able to find the time to write, but I tell my students, I say, just start with 20 minutes and I probably should be taking my own advice right now. Just start with 20 minutes, 20 minutes a day, whether it's first thing in the morning or whether it's right before you go to bed, and you will see that just that showing up. Making that appointment with yourself, the writing will start to flow. I see writing as an act of self-love, right? As writers, we have to write. For me, writing is like breathing, and so we have to write, and so showing up for yourself 20 minutes a day is always number one. Number two, I would say get into a writing community. You need people to hold you accountable for things. And there are lots of free writing communities, I'm sure, in your community. And then the last thing I would say is reward yourself. Give yourself a goal and say, I'm gonna do the 20 minute a day for 30 straight days. At the end of that 30 days, reward yourself with something. You've done a good job. My reward is usually a massage, but your reward could be a glass of wine and a piece of chocolate.

Jane 18:31

Excellent, excellent advice. You, your first novels, your first three were contemporary fiction and then you pivoted to historical. Are you, do you have a preference between the two?

Sadeqa 18:44

Oh, that's funny. No one's asked me if I had a preference. People ask, are you gonna go back to contemporary fiction? But no one has asked me if I had a preference. I don't think that I have a preference. I think that I write the story that comes to me. I had not. I had not planned to write historical fiction. It was just one of those things that I was walking the Richmond Slave Trail. I was with some friends. I read this marker about this woman Mary Lumpkin, who was an enslaved woman, and I just was I don't know, I was turned off by the way the marker described her, on one marker it said that. Robert Lumpkin, the man who she was married to, but was also her jailer and her owner, he was a bully. He was he was the devil. This was the Devil's half acre. He was notorious for being the one that was ultimately the hardest punisher in the land, for enslaved people. But then it said with Mary and their five children. That they wanted for nothing. And I just remember thinking something is left out of this story because I knew a woman like her didn't have agency over her life and I really wanted to know what that meant to her. And that was the beginning of the ancestors pushing me. Pressing me towards writing this story because it was a book that I wanted to read, but I didn't think I was qualified to actually write it. I thought to write historical fiction that you had to have a PhD in history or, or at least a master's degree in history. I didn't know, I didn't know how to do it. But I had a friend who she said to me, she said, squa the thing that scares you most. Is what you are supposed to be doing next. And that just gave me permission to say the very least I can do is give this book a try. And I'm glad that I did.'cause here we are.

Jane 20:32

Here you are. I know this is an off topic thing, but what did it feel like to get that call about being a Reese Witherspoon pick? That must have been amazing.

Sadeqa 20:39

Oh, wow. It was so like crazy because I was like sitting on my sun porch. It was like the end of summer. I was like in a ratty t-shirt hair just crazy all over my head. Just just whatever I was doing, not thinking about that. And my agent is Hey, can you jump on a Zoom call really fast? And they're like, all these people on the Zoom call and they gave me the news and it was like, oh my gosh, because. When I go back to what I wanted from the beginning, when I went out and I self-published that first book, the reason why I didn't stay self-published and I wanted to go back to the publishing house because my goal, my dream, was always to be a New York Times bestseller. So with every book, that was always my goal. And once I got that call, I thought. I have a real chance at it now. I really have a chance at it.

Jane 21:26

Absolutely. Great. I have a couple more questions for you, everyone. If you have questions, you can put them in the chat or the q and a. Are you ready to share what you're working on next?

Sadeqa 21:36

I'm not really working right now on anything. I'm mostly on tour. I have been on a 16 plus city tour for the last month, so I've been on planes and at events talking to people about the keeper of lost children. I'm thinking about a story. I have a little inkling of a place that I think I wanna write about, which is a little different than normal. Usually it's the woman. School comes to me and it's this is the story I'm gonna ride, but this time it's a place. So I have to fool around with a little bit more and just see where this idea takes me,

Jane 22:09

see where, what bubbles up from that. Yeah. Yeah,

Sadeqa 22:11

exactly. Yes.

Jane 22:13

Oh, this is another question I always ask was the title always Keeper of Lost Children?

Sadeqa 22:19

The title was actually Beautiful Children to Start, and when it got to my UK publisher, she thought that it was a little bit soft, and so we started playing around with words. We usually have this big Google Doc that everybody's contributing to and we move words around and we came to Keeper of Lost Children.

Jane 22:38

And then do you have a say in the cover?'cause this is a beautiful cover.

Sadeqa 22:42

Thank you. Yes. We worked very hard on it. I think at least two or three months it took us to get the cover. I love it. But yes, I had a lot of feedback on the cover. Yes, a lot of feedback.

Jane 22:56

And yeah, just those little braids like it just catch you,

Sadeqa 22:59

yes, exactly. And the little hunch in her, the hunch in her back and the trench coat and all of that. I just, I love it.

Jane 23:06

So precious. Oh, Sandra asks, you have a very pretty name any, does. Is it, does it have any meaning?

Sadeqa 23:13

Friend.

Jane 23:14

Friend. Oh, lovely

Sadeqa 23:15

friend. Yes.

Jane 23:16

Lemme see. Any other questions in the chat? I don't see, yeah, people are being shy tonight. What are you reading right now? You probably don't have any time to read.

Sadeqa 23:25

Oh, no, I, I'm reading kin right now by Te Ari Jones.

Jane 23:29

Oh,

Sadeqa 23:29

yeah. She's the Oprah Pick for this month. So I'm reading I'm reading that book right now, which is really good. And I'm listening to a book called Cursed Daughters, and I don't wanna butcher the author's name because I don't know how to pronounce it, but Curse Daughters is what I'm always listening to a book and reading a book.

Jane 23:46

Same here. I like, it helps me get through more books. I'm reading it Girl by Allison Pataki, which just came out today, so

Sadeqa 23:53

Oh

Jane 23:53

yes, I

Sadeqa 23:53

heard that.

Jane 23:54

Cover, cover like your shirt, like same shade of pink. I love pink, so

Sadeqa 23:58

yeah.

Jane 23:59

Let me see. Any other, did I miss anything? No, I think that's it. And I know you have another call, so I'll give you a little time in between. Again, congratulations. This is a beautiful story. I wish you so much success with it. It's such an important story too, like the history. So I'm congrats on your tour. I should mention you have a great you have a great section on your website for book clubs

Sadeqa 24:21

Yes.

Jane 24:22

Information there. And you have a lot of events coming up. If people are looking for. Where you might be at in the country including and also in France next month.

Sadeqa 24:30

Yes. Yes. And we have, I'll say this, if there are any writers in the room, we have two slots left for our my writing retreat in Esan, France. You can go to my website, it will be under events. You do have two apply, but we do have two slots left, and it's from April 5th to the 11th. So you still have time.

Jane 24:49

Amazing. Amazing. Again, congratulations. Illa Children is Out now from Simon and Schuster. My latest novel the Spy Thrill Women in Arlington Hall is out from Lake Union. Don't forget to follow happy Hour wherever you listen to podcast or subscribe to my YouTube channel and thank you again. So if you can thank, take care. I wish you all the best.

Sadeqa 25:08

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.