Our Missing Hearts is set in a near-future United States, where a recent economic collapse called the Crisis leads the government to pass legislation censoring “un-American” ideas. Though the named purpose of PACT (Preserving American Cultures and Traditions) is to protect the country from disunity and crisis by rooting out un-American ideologies, it instead leaves the nation in a dystopian state of surveillance and fear. The novel begins when 12-year-old Bird receives a letter from his mother, Margaret, who abandoned him and his father three years prior for reasons he does not understand. The letter contains a drawing of numerous cats, but Bird does not know what the drawing means. Bird and his friend, Sadie, used to bond over their missing mothers. Under the PACT law, authorities can take custody of children who are exposed to dangerous, unpatriotic ideas by their parents. Sadie was removed from her home and placed with a foster family because of her mother, Erika’s journalistic criticism of PACT. Last year, she ran away from her foster family, and Bird has not heard from her since. Bird lives with his father, Ethan, who works in Harvard University’s library, though he used to be a professor of linguistics. At school, Bird is shunned for being the son of Margaret Miu, the seditious Chinese American poet. “Persons of Asian origin”—known as PAOs—are subject to greater surveillance and discrimination under PACT law, since the U.S. blames China for the Crisis. Bird’s memories of his mother center around the stories she told him, one of which was about a boy who drew cats.