But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. 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 unpatriotic-including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.īird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. 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. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far.

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. Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear. I’m incredibly honored-and grateful as always to for championing stories starting conversations! ? Ng shared news of her book’s selection for the club on Twitter, writing, “I’m incredibly honored-and grateful as always to for championing stories starting conversations!”

“It’s thought-provoking, heart-wrenching, and it just had me up all night.” “This book is just sublime,” Witherspoon said. “I’m so honored by that, particularly because I feel like this is the heart and soul, the ethos of your book club, that stories can change minds,” Ng said to Witherspoon of being twice selected for the club. (That book was also adapted into a Hulu miniseries starring Witherspoon.) Witherspoon announced her selection in an Instagram post, noting that Ng is now the first author to have more than one book picked for the club-her novel Little Fires Everywhere was the September 2017 selection. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “thoroughly engrossing and deeply moving.” Ng’s novel, scheduled for publication Tuesday by Penguin Press, follows Bird, a 12-year-old boy living in a dystopian America, who goes in search of his mother, a poet who disappeared three years earlier, when the government deemed her work unpatriotic. Reese Withersoon has selected Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts as the latest pick for her popular book club.

Our missing hearts book