The Inconvenient Child An Abandoned Australian Child Struggles To Survive and Find Her African American Father by Sharyn Killens and Lindsay Lewis

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners.

An unacceptable liaison, a secret birth, a mother’s silence, and her black child’s journey to discover the truth…

It is 1948, Sydney. Pretty, blonde Grace discovers she is pregnant to a black merchant marine who has sailed back to America. The White Australia Policy is in place and society’s judgment matters; so what will Grace do with this baby?

This is the extraordinary true-life story of Sharyn Killens - The Inconvenient Child.

Rescued from squalid foster care by visiting champion African-American boxer Freddie Dawson, the baby Sharyn is taken to live in a party house in Sydney’s red-light district of Kings Cross. Her absent, elegant mother then abandons her in a convent–orphanage, at age five.

By fifteen, discrimination within her family, resentment and clashes over her father’s undisclosed identity see the troubled teenager running away to the streets of Kings Cross where she’s arrested and sentenced to notorious juvenile detention centres in Parramatta and Hay.

Sharyn’s solace is her love of music but can she realize her dream to become a singer if, by twenty-four, she is caught up in the Kings Cross lifestyle?

Determined to find her African-American father, Sharyn sets out in search of her roots; a quest taking her across the world and eventually to America’s Deep South. But will she find the loving family and belonging she has yearned for all her life? (back cover)