Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

Sandra, the original founder of Little Princes Children’s Home, often repeats the phrase, “The children, as always, will be fine,” a sentence that provides Grennan some solace when he worries about the children’s welfare (47). Each time Grennan travels away from the Little Princes, he contemplates how they might survive without him: who will wash their clothes? Get them to school? Take them to the hospital? Ultimately, Grennan comes to the realization that the children’s welfare does not rest on his shoulders alone. Instead, “The children were often surprisingly independent” (34). The author provides examples of the children inventing their own games, eagerly completing their homework, and the older children stepping in to take care of the younger ones. Additionally, local men and women help to care for the children, providing them food, protection, and comfort. Grennan is not alone in caring for the Little Princes.

Key to Sandra’s message, and what Grennan comes to understand by 2007, is that in spite of the children’s past suffering, they are extremely resilient. For example, orphaned siblings Priya and Raju are deeply hurt when Grennan returns from Humla with pictures of the other children’s parents but not theirs. The author confirmed that Priya and Raju’s parents had died during the civil war, unlike the other children’s. Grennan takes the siblings aside to comfort them. “The three of us went upstairs to the rooftop, taking three small stools with us. I asked Bagwati to make milk tea for us. And I went through the photos again, all two hundred, telling them everything I could remember” (239). Although the siblings would never see their own parents again, they took solace in seeing the other children’s families.

Grennan discovers that he does not need to change Nepalese society, convert anyone to Christianity, or connect every child with their lost family. The knowledge of the children’s ultimate resiliency—that the children will, as always, be fine—makes it possible for Grennan to eventually leave Nepal and return to the United States in 2007.

Grennan continually questions if he is the right person to be working to unite Nepalese children with their families. Grennan is an outsider who is an imperfect candidate for the task: he does not speak the local languages, he is an American, he is not experienced with children, and he does not have significant amounts of money to throw at the cause. The author’s feelings of insecurity wax and wane throughout the book, but they never completely go away.

Grennan’s self-esteem flounders most at moments when he fails to keep the children safe. For example, his deepest personal crisis arrives when Golkka abducts and traffics the seven children that Grennan had arranged to go to an orphanage. Acting out of self-reproach and guilt, the author quickly creates Next Generation Nepal (NGN) to begin collecting donations to aid in his search and rescue of the seven lost children. “To me,” he writes, “each donation was a touching display of blind faith that I could be able to accomplish something” (109). By taking money from concerned donors, the author feels two competing emotions: he worries he is a phony who cannot see the task through to the end, but the donations also provide a rush of encouragement. For Grennan, the latter of the two emotions triumphs.

However, his feelings of insecurity never fail to return. In Part 4, when Grennan finds the children’s parents in Humla, he feels unprepared to handle the depth of emotion that both he and the parents are feeling. “It was intimate and overwhelming and I felt, over and over, unqualified to be doing this job,” he writes. “But there was nobody else to do it” (193). Even after finding the children’s families, Grennan never considers himself the right man for the job. Instead, he just happens to be one of the few people doing the job. Despite Grennan’s outsider status and his insecurities, he continues to stay and work with the children of Nepal while attempting to keep his self-esteem in check.

One person who argues that Grennan is the right person for the job is Liz Flanagan. Liz’s daily emails provide a confidence boost for Grennan, which he is not always able to provide for himself. Liz points to her Christian faith as the reason for her unfailing belief in Grennan’s ability to perform the task of locating the seven lost children and reuniting the families. She writes to the author, “‘I want you to know that I truly believe that God wants you to find these children’” (128). The author does not address whether or not he believes that it is God’s will for him to help the children. What he does have unfailing faith in, however, are Liz’s convictions.