In his early twenties, Conor Grennan thought he'd take a year off work and travel around the world. However, he originally wanted to brag to young women that he was going to do something special during his year away like saving children and that's exactly what he ended up doing. Little did he know at the time that his 3-month volunteer stint in Nepal would turn into two years!!
These children were orphaned and Conor wasn't exactly sure if he wanted to get involved with a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he soon came to learn that he felt more for these children that he thought he ever would. How could he walk away from these smiling children who were totally alone and had come to love him so very, very much?
The children weren't really orphans but servants for families who child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil war for huge sums of money and then lying and saying they would take their child(ren) to safety. The children would then be abandoned far, far from their original homes in the civil uprising of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu.
Conor soon found this bragging idea of his to be the adventure of his life when he becomes totally committed to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but it would be a very difficult job indeed. Conor would end up risking is own life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Neapl, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury to his knee and the threat of being snowed in, in the cold. Waiting back in Kathmandu was Liz, the woman who would eventually become his wife and share in his life's work.
Conor sets up a home called "Next Generation Nepal" and did fundraising back in the United States to buy the home, furnish it with furniture, stoves, beds, blankets, and pillows for the children he hoped to house there. He figured he could accept approximately 26 children and all these children came to love Conor dearly. With a total of $6,000.00 raised he began to build the home.
"Little Princes" was an inspiring, stirring, moving, page-turning adventure that you won't be able to put down. Beating this novel for the top spot in 2011 will be difficult although I've already said that about one other book this year!
January 26, 2011
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