Our lost hearts

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet life with his loving, broken father, a former linguist who now works organizing books in a university library. Bird knows not to ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws designed to preserve “American culture” following years of economic instability and violence. To maintain peace and restore prosperity, authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian descent, and libraries have been forced to remove books deemed unpatriotic—including works by Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese-American poet who left the family when he was nine. Bird grew up denying his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a mysterious drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him through the many folk tales poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of a secret network of librarians, into the lives of taken-in children, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.