Our Missing Hearts: A Novel

"In a heightened version of the present day, circumstances once thought unthinkable have become the new normal. Following economic and political turmoil, the U.S. embraces its worst instincts, driven by fear, discrimination and civil rights infringements run rampant. As subversive or “challenging” books are removed from shelves and dissidents ripped from their families, a 12-year-old boy called Bird goes searching for his mother, a revered Chinese American poet who went missing amid the tumult, leaving Bird’s loving but shattered white dad as his sole caretaker. Beautifully written and surprisingly hopeful, this gut punch of a novel is among my top five of the year."