Smith Younce describes the novel this way: “ Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. Though Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems, when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. Echoing what is transpiring now all over the U.S., libraries are being 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 9. 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, including permitting authorities to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin. Ng’s protagonist has learned not to 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 Harvard’s library. Like her previous novel, Our Missing Hearts takes up the cause of the outsider pitted against a system and society in which injustice is the norm, even if unacknowledged. As only she can, Celeste has crafted an unforgettable and shattering commentary on this moment.” I love that this cover conveys simultaneously both that darkness and a call to move toward the light.
Our Missing Hearts is a timeless depiction of motherhood and of adolescence, but Celeste has set this stunning portrait of a family in the midst of a society that has been consumed by racism, by authoritarianism, and by fear. Smith Younce told us: “It is an honor to be publishing Celeste’s brilliant third novel.
The book-Ng's third-was acquired by Penguin Press executive editor Ginny Smith Younce from agent Julie Barer at The Book Group.
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