AustLit

'An unacceptable liaison, a secret birth, a mother's silence and her black child's journey to discover the truth. The story begins in 1948, Sydney, Australia. Pretty, blonde Grace discovers she is pregnant to a visiting black American serviceman. 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 story of Sharyn Killens - the inconvenient child.

The baby Sharyn, is rescued from squalid foster care by a visiting African American champion boxer and taken to live in a 'party house' in Sydney's red light district of Kings Cross. But her absent, elegant mother then abandons Sharyn in a convent-orphanage at age five, where she suffers abuse at the hands of a demented nun.

By fifteen, discrimination within her family, resentment and clashes over her father's undisclosed identity see the troubled runaway teenager arrested in the streets of Kings Cross. She has committed no crime but she is sentenced to the notorious juvenile detention centers of Parramatta and Hay, during the 1960s. Sharyn Killens' 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 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?' (Publisher's blurb)