Our lost hearts

Summary of the novel Our Lost Hearts - Celeste Eng: Bird Gardner, a twelve-year-old, lives a peaceful life with his loving and broken father, a former linguistics scholar now working in organizing books at a university library. Bird knows he should not ask too many questions or stand out too much. Over a decade, their lives have been governed by written laws to preserve the "American culture" following years of economic instability and violence. To maintain peace and restore prosperity, authorities are now allowed to transfer the children of dissenters, especially those of Asian descent, and libraries have been forced to remove books considered unpatriotic; including Bird's mother Margaret, a Chinese-American poet who left the family when he was nine. Bird grew up denying his mother and her poetry; he does not know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he should not question. But when he receives a mysterious message containing only a strange drawing, he is drawn to a mission to find her. This will take him on a journey through many folk tales he absorbed as a child, through a network of secret librarians, to the lives of children who were kidnapped, ultimately leading him to New York City, where a new challenge and a long-awaited change begin.