num_pages: 335
description: A novel about a mothers unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions stand out too much or stray too far. For a decade their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve American culture in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents especially those of Asian origin and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatrioticincluding the work of Birds mother Margaret a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesnt know her work or what happened to her and he knows he shouldnt wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child through the ranks of an underground network of librarians into the lives of the children who have been taken and finally to New York City where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
language: English
title: Our Missing Hearts
publisher: Penguin Press