Tong Ge is the pseudonym of a writer who was born in China and moved to Canada in the late 1980s to pursue graduate studies. She earned a M.Sc. in agricultural economics from the University of Saskatchewan in 1992. Tong’s poetry, prose, and short stories have been published in English and in Chinese in North America, England and Taiwan. Tong lives in Calgary. Her debut novel The House Filler is intended to be the first in a trilogy of historical fiction.
Fiction
The House Filler
Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2023.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
The House Filler is told through the experiences of Golden Phoenix, a woman who faces war, poverty, and political oppression as she fights for survival, freedom and happiness. After the untimely death of her husband, Golden Phoenix is determined to keep her family together. However, poverty forces her to make the heart-wrenching decision to give her teenage twins to the Red Army. During the upheaval of the Japanese invasion of her hometown, she is separated from her two young girls, and her remaining son leaves to fight with the Nationalist army. Golden Phoenix, along with her adopted son, remains to endure the horror and hardship of war. When the civil war ends with the Communists in power in 1949, one of her twins, who had joined the Communist Party, is wrongly accused of being a traitor and is sentenced to death. Golden Phoenix and her family must find a way to save her son’s life.
Awards and Honours
2023 Eyelands Book Awards (Finalist)
2024 Canadian Book Club Awards for fiction (Finalist)
2024 Independent Press Award for new fiction (Winner)
2024 National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (NAIWE) Award for Literary Fiction (Winner)