Register 7 Seats Remaining
Join us for lively discussions about thought-provoking books. Register online or by calling any library, then visit the library hosting this event to pick up your copy of the book.
After registering, pick up your copy of the book at Cliff Wright Library.
Our Missing Hearts
Celeste Ng
From the number one bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, this novel is a deeply suspenseful and heartrending story about the unbreakable love between a mother and child in a society consumed by fear. Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving-but-broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University's 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 drawn 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. Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power and limitations of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.
The Cliff Wright Library replaced the Lakewood Library, which relocated when the Lakewood Civic Centre opened in October 1988. The library officially opened on Jan 9, 1989, and was named after former Saskatoon mayor, Cliff Wright, on Mar 30, 1989.
