What if you lived in a world where books were banned, children were taken away, and your mother was a wanted criminal? That's the reality for Bird, a 12-year-old Chinese American boy who embarks on a perilous journey to find his missing mother in Celeste Ng's dystopian novel Our Missing Hearts.

Bird's mother, Margaret Miu, is a renowned poet who wrote a subversive poem that challenged the oppressive regime of PACT, the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act. PACT is a law that aims to restore order and prosperity in America after a period of economic and social turmoil known as the Crisis. Under PACT, anyone who is deemed unpatriotic or un-American can be arrested, and their children can be relocated to foster families. This is especially true for people of Asian origin, who are blamed for the country's woes.

Bird has grown up without his mother, who left him and his father when he was nine years old. He lives with his father, a former linguist who now works as a librarian in a university where most books have been pulped and recycled into toilet paper. Bird has learned to keep a low profile, not to ask too many questions, and not to wonder about his mother or her poems.

But everything changes when he receives a mysterious letter with a cryptic drawing that leads him to believe that his mother is still alive and wants to see him. He decides to follow the clues and embark on a quest to find her, even if it means risking his life and breaking the law. Along the way, he encounters a secret network of librarians who preserve banned books, other children who have been taken by the authorities, and the many folktales that his mother used to tell him as bedtime stories.

Our Missing Hearts is a gripping and moving novel that explores the themes of love, loss, identity, and resistance in a world where fear and hatred prevail. It is also a tribute to the power of words and stories to connect us and inspire us to fight for what we believe in. Celeste Ng, the author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere, delivers her most ambitious and compelling work yet with this dystopian masterpiece. If you are looking for a book that will challenge you, touch you, and make you think, don't miss Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng.