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

Conor Grennan
William Morrow (2010)
ISBN 9780061930058
Reviewed by Joseph Yurt for Reader Views (2/11)


“The fund-raisers were the first moments I realized I was actually going to do this. I had to stand up in front of fifty people who had given twenty dollars each and announce that Next Generation Nepal would be the first organization to not only stop child trafficking in Nepal, but to try to reverse it. We would search the hills and mountains of Nepal, in some of the most remote regions in the world, until we found the families of trafficked children. People clapped. I did not add that I might be completely full of crap.”

At the beginning of this remarkable true story, author Conor Grennan unabashedly admits, that at twenty-nine, he traded his day job for a year-long trip around the world, not for humanitarian reasons, but rather to build his own cachet as footloose adventurer. In fact, what resulted was an experience more profound than he could have ever imagined.

His around-the-globe journey commenced with a three month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children’s Home, an orphanage in civil war ravaged Nepal. What he encountered was a world totally out of alignment with his own. In a span of only ninety days, and ultimately continuing for the following ten years, Grennan begins an emersion in child trafficking that would galvanize within him a lifelong commitment to separated children and their families in Nepal. In that ten year span, “Little Princes” chronicles the writers touching, tragic, and sometimes amusing adventures that transform him from reluctant participant to impassioned proponent of his cause.

There are those who are still reluctant to embrace the notion that one person can make a difference. Among them, some might even liken the thought to Don Quixote tilting at windmills. But, the concept is real. We become aware, every time we read or hear of story like “Little Princes,” that this is so. This book will make you a believer.

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