As with Maynard's Labor Day, Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng is a Bildungsroman that transcends the trappings of its genre.  Bird Gardner, a twelve-year-old boy, lives with his father, a linguist turned librarian who finds solace amid the relative peace of bookshelves.  Like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, this novel is set in a dystopian America, where, to keep the peace and restore prosperity, authorities now relocate the children of dissidents, and libraries remove books perceived as unpatriotic, including the works of Bird's mother, a Chinese-American poet who left the family some years before.  Our Missing Hearts is a lyrical exhortation of art's powers (and limitations) to effect change.

Want to read this month’s Literary Circle book choice and enjoy using an e-reader? You can read Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng for free when you join our eBook Club! See here for more information about the eBook-Club and how to sign up and access hundreds of gratis books and audiobooks! 

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