Shaker Heights is almost another character in the novel. What does this say about planned communities?

The story takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a planned community governed by rules as intrusive into personal expression as the allowed height of lawns and the exterior colors of homes. Everything about Shaker Heights has been planned to attain and maintain the appearance of order and order is simply another word for “normalcy.” That which is out of order is also out of sync with what is normal. This devotion to order and normalcy masquerades a more sinister intent: control of what is deemed to be normal and what is not. The obsession of Shaker Heights as an idea becomes concrete in the narrative focus of the story in the form of a child custody battle between the Chinese biological mother of a child and the white family trying to adopt her.