Wayne Ng was a school social worker in Ottawa who now is devoting his time to writing. He was born in downtown Toronto and studied social work at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). His parents immigrated to Canada from China. Ng’s fourth novel, Johnny Delivers, will be a sequel to his acclaimed crime novella Letters From Johnny.
Fiction
The Family Code
Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2023.
e-book (Access restricted to members of the university community)
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Every family has rituals and routines holding them together. But sometimes they are the very things that tear them apart. The Family Code is a gritty family drama featuring the troubled life of Hannah Belenko, a young single mother dogged by the brutality of past traumas and a code of silence that she must crack in order to be free—or else lose everything.
Hannah was raised by this code and rules her own family by it. When she loses her daughter to the state and her boyfriend threatens her, she flees from Ottawa to Halifax with her remaining son, six-year-old Axel. While she bulldozes her way through everything and schemes to protect him, Axel flounders in the chaos. He begins to doubt his mother and her dream of a way out. With her life crashing down, Hannah is driven by desperation to survive yet hangs on to elusive hope.
Fiction
Finding the Way: A Novel of Lao Tzu
Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2018.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
In the sixth century BC, the legendary philosopher Lao Tzu seeks redemption and an opportunity to spread his beliefs by joining the royal court, but is greeted by a vainglorious King, a mad Queen and a deadly struggle for power in progress between the twin princes. In one of them, the thoughtful but hesitant heir to the throne Prince Meng, he discovers a protégé. But Lao Tzu’s ideas of peace and natural order leave him ill-prepared for the intrigue of the palace and the noxious rivalry between Meng and his younger twin brother, the bold and decisive Prince Chao. Confucius arrives and allies with Chao, thus raising the stakes for control of the dynasty culminating in a venomous clash between Taoism and Confucianism. With the King ailing and war imminent, Lao Tzu is betrayed and accused of spying. The Master Philosopher must cast aside his naivete and idealism to fight for his life.
Fiction (Teen)
Johnny Delivers
Toronto: Guernica, 2024.
forthcoming Nov. 2024
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Eighteen-year-old Johnny Wong’s dead-end life consists of delivering Chinese food and holding his chaotic family together in Toronto. When his sweet but treacherous Auntie, the mahjong queen, calls in their family debt, he fears the family will lose the Red Pagoda restaurant and break apart.
Invoking the spirit of Bruce Lee and in cahoots with his stoner friend Barry, Johnny tries to save his family by taking up a life of crime delivering weed with a side of egg rolls. He chases his first love, but his hands are already full with his emotionally distant mother, his dream-crushing father, and his reckless, sardonic little sister.
As he fights to stay ahead of his Auntie, sordid family secrets unfold. With lives on the line, the only way out is an epic mahjong battle. While Johnny is on a mission to figure out who he is and what he wants, he must learn that help can come from within and that our heroes are closer than we think.
Dripping with 1970s nostalgia, Johnny Delivers is a gritty and humorous standalone sequel to the much-loved and award-winning Letters From Johnny.
Fiction (Teen)
Letters From Johnny
Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2021.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Set in Toronto 1970, just as the FLQ crisis emerges to shake an innocent country, eleven year old Johnny Wong uncovers an underbelly to his tight, downtown neighbourhood. He shares a room with his Chinese immigrant mother in a neighbourhood of American draft dodgers and new Canadians. In a span of a few weeks his world seesaws. He is befriended by Rollie, one of the draft dodgers who takes on a fatherly and writing mentor role. Johnny’s mother is threatened by the “children’s warfare society.” Meany Ming, one of the characters by the rooming house is found murdered. He suspects the feline loving neighbour, the Catwoman. Inspired by an episode of Mannix, he tries to break into her house. Ultimately he is betrayed but he must act to save his family. He discovers a distant kinship with Jean, the son of one of the hostages kidnapped by the FLQ who have sent Canada into a crisis.