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. 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. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her.