Goodreads Blurb

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. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or 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 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.

Bird 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. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to 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 City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.

My Review: Rated 4 out of 5 stars

This is an unforgettable story about a woman’s courage as she fights to give voice to the silenced. Imagine having to abandon your family, not for a crime, but because of your heritage and the innocent poems that others twisted out of context. Fighting your way to freedom while holding on to the hope that your words and those of the families whose children were taken away get a chance to share their story. Margaret, a Chinese American poet and mother to Bird Gardner, watches her world shatter in an instant. She always followed all of society’s rules, yet her identity marks her as a target. Through heartbreak and hope, Margaret and her son unite, and she is determined to reclaim the truth. Their bravery lights a path through the darkness of prejudice and the pain endured by the Asian community. This story will pull at your heartstrings and open your eyes to the racism and oppression the Asian community and others have gone through in the United States. I loved that the librarians played a role in helping collect information about all the children who were taken and that Asian folktales helped Bird in his travels to locate his mother.

Author Biography

Celeste Ng is the author of three novels, Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts.


Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You (2014), was a New York Times bestseller, a
New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Everything I Never Told You was also the winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the ALA’s Alex Award. It has been translated into over thirty languages and is being adapted for the screen.


Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere (2017) was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 Indie Next bestseller, and Amazon’s Best Fiction Book of 2017. It was named a best book of the year by over 25 publications, the winner of the Ohioana Award and the Goodreads Readers Choice Award 2017 in Fiction, and spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list.
Little Fires Everywhere has been published abroad in more than 30 languages and has been adapted as a limited series on Hulu, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington.

Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, will be published on October 4, 2022.

Celeste grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She graduated from Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan). Her fiction and essays have appeared in the
New York Times, The Guardian, and many other publications, and she is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors.