We have a few more weeks in the year, but I’m going to call it, Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts was the best fiction that I read in 2022. It’s a heavy, powerhouse of a novel about love, suppression, and art. It’s incredible.

Years in the past, Margaret published a book of poetry that did not have a wide audience. Now, she is married and the mother of a young son. Both Margaret’s life and the world around her have changed dramatically. Approximately a decade earlier, the world suffered through a devastating pandemic and the political climate has shifted. China is the biggest enemy and by extension, asian-americans are deemed suspicious. Patriotism is enforced and those who are suspicious must double-down on their efforts, such as donating to causes supporting an America first agenda. Margaret is asian-american and although she has a subversive, artistic streak, she is trying to keep a low profile for the sake of her family.

Margaret’s world is upended when a group of anti-government rebels takes a line from one of her poems and uses it as their slogan. Soon, Margaret is seeing her line, “Our Missing Hearts” show up in the news and in her own community as an act of rebellion. Knowing that it’s just a matter of time before she becomes implicated, Margaret goes on the run. Her son, whom she affectionately nicknamed, Bird, is left in the dark as to why his mother left. Kids are being taken from homes that are considered anti-American and in an effort to keep Bird with his father, his parents have made a complete split. If the police come, his father will give the story that Margaret is subversive and they have nothing to do with her, no clue as to where she has gone. She is the enemy and they do not talk about her in their household.

Years after Margaret left, a preteen Bird finds a hidden message from his mom and decides to run away to find her. Bird senses that his parents have been lying to him and will risk everything to find out the truth.

Our Missing Hearts is absolutely terrifying, primarily because it feels like it could be foreshadowing a future America. Certainly, there are parallels to our current world with the covid pandemic, the rise is asian hate crimes, and the way some people are viewing patriotism. It certainly doesn’t feel far off from a potential future. In addition to making parents fearful of having their children taken from them, a big aspect of the government control is the banning and restriction of books. Libraries play a large part in Our Missing Hearts, however, they are not functioning quite in the way that we know them. In a clever twist, librarians are acting as an underground information network. Rightly so, they are among the heroes in the story. Artists are also heroes, as they put voice to things that others dare not speak. The climax of the story is quite unexpected, spectacular, and heartbreaking.

Our Missing Hearts is a heavy burden of a book, but an important read. It’s one that will linger with you and would make an excellent choice for book groups. I can imagine that Ng and this book in particular, will end up on banned book lists in the future. It’s sure to set some people off.