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

Conor Grennan’s Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal is a memoir that details the author’s humanitarian work and travels in Nepal. The book’s storyline moves chronologically, beginning in 2004, when Grennan first volunteers at the Little Princes Children’s Home in Nepal. The story concludes in 2007, when the author moves back to the United States to establish a life with his fiancée Liz and grow his nonprofit organization Next Generation Nepal. The book tracks Grennan’s deepening commitment to reunite dozens of children who were separated from their families during the Nepalese civil war.

“A Note on the Crisis in Nepal” and the Prologue provides a brief background on the civil war in Nepal, which took place from 1996 to 2006. During the conflict, Maoist rebels fought to dethrone Nepal’s longstanding monarchy. To the dismay of Nepalese families, Maoist rebels forced young children across the country to join their army. Sensing an opportunity, child traffickers approached desperate and impoverished families and offered to relocate their children for protection. Ultimately, thousands of children were routed to Kathmandu, where they encountered dangerous and uncertain fates. Most have never seen their families again.

Part 1 brings the reader into 2004, when Grennan quits his long-time job in Prague to begin a year-long tour of the globe. His first stop on the tour is Nepal, where he plans to volunteer at an orphanage called the Little Princes Children’s Home. Grennan openly admits to pursuing the opportunity to impress his family and friends but not due to a deep desire to work with orphaned children. Despite his original motives, the author immediately bonds with the 18 children at the orphanage.

In Part 2, Grennan details his departure from Nepal in January 2005, which kicks off a worldwide tour. After the tour, he returns to America broke and without a job. However, he feels a strong draw to return to Nepal and the Little Princes. In January 2006, one year after his original visit, Grennan moves back into the Little Princes Children’s Home. During this second visit, he becomes even closer to the children and finds out that many of them are not orphans but instead victims of child trafficking. Somewhere in rural Nepal, their parents are still alive. Grennan also meets and begins to care for seven new children being trafficked in Kathmandu and arranges for the seven to find safety in an orphanage called the Umbrella Foundation.

In Part 3, Grennan returns again to the United States, this time intent on staying and building a new life and career there. However, as Nepal’s civil war worsens, Grennan receives word that the seven children he arranged to go to the Umbrella Foundation have been abducted and re-trafficked within Kathmandu. The author, feeling exceptionally responsible and guilty, vows to return to Nepal a third time to find the children. He also creates Next Generation Nepal (NGN), a nonprofit organization, to raise funds for his mission. Having returned to Kathmandu, Grennan successfully finds six of the seven lost children and establishes a new orphanage, Dhaulagiri House, for them to live in.

In Part 4, Grennan plans to find the parents of the 18 children living at Little Princes and the six children living at Dhaulagiri House. All of the families live in a poor district called Humla, hundreds of miles from Kathmandu. Grennan puts together a team of porters and translators to help him on the journey. Although the trip is treacherous, the author successfully finds 24 families and informs them that their children are alive and being housed in a children’s home. Despite this information, only a few parents are able to travel from Humla to retrieve their children. During this period, the author begins to fall in love with a woman named Liz Flanagan, an American lawyer who has also volunteered at orphanages abroad.

Part 5 describes Grennan’s final year in Nepal and his deepening love for Liz Flanagan, who has come to visit him in Kathmandu multiple times. Grennan and other NGN staff continue to house new children in Dhaulagiri House and find their disconnected families in far-off regions. He struggles to return children to their original homes, however, because the parents realize their children are receiving better care at the children’s home. Ultimately, in 2007, Grennan decides to move home to the United States and marry Liz and continue to fundraise for NGN. Staff in Nepal continue to operate Dhaulagiri House and the Little Princes Children’s Home.