Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now selves book in Havard's library. He knows not to ask too many questions, stand out too much, 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 ogin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic-including the work of Bird's 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 doesn't know her work the or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him through 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, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
Our Missing Heart is a old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can turn a blind eye to the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power -and limitation of art to create change in the world, the lessons and leg acies we pass onto our children, how many of us can survive a broken world with our heart intact.
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now selves book in Havard's library. He knows not to ask too many questions, stand out too much, 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 ogin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic-including the work of Bird's 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 doesn't know her work the or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him through 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, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
Our Missing Heart is a old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can turn a blind eye to the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power -and limitation of art to create change in the world, the lessons and leg acies we pass onto our children, how many of us can survive a broken world with our heart
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