THE LIFE OF A YOUNG CHINESE GIRL IS TORN APART BY DARK FAMILY SECRETS AND DIVIDED LOYALTIES IN A SMALL ONTARIO TOWN IN THE 1950s

• The 2011 One Book Community Read for the city of Toronto

• The 2007 "One Community, One Book" selection for Portland, Oregon

• Winner of a 2006 Alex Award from the American Library Association

• An American Library Association Notable Book for 2006

Midnight at the Dragon Café is the much-talked-about debut novel telling the story of a young girl, the daughter of a small Ontario town’s solitary Chinese family, whose life is changed over the course of one summer in the 1960s, when she learns the burden of secrets. Through Su-Jen’s eyes, the hard life behind the scenes at the Dragon Café unfolds. As Su-Jen’s father works continually for a better future, her mother, a beautiful but embittered woman, settles uneasily into their new life.

Su-Jen feels the weight of her mother's unhappiness as Su-Jen's life takes her outside the restaurant and far from the customs of the traditional past. When Su-Jen's half-brother arrives, smouldering under the responsibilities he must bear as the dutiful Chinese son, he forms an alliance with Su-Jen's mother, one that will have devastating consequences.

Written in spare, intimate prose, Midnight at the Dragon Café is vivid portrait of a childhood divided by two cultures and touched by unfulfilled longings and unspoken secrets.

PRAISE FOR MIDNIGHT AT THE DRAGON CAFÉ

“In deceptively simple, intimate prose, Judy Fong Bates captures the complexities of a childhood filled with secrets, longing, and superstition, and powerfully exposes the lengths to which families will go to survive. Midnight at the Dragon Café is an original, haunting debut novel.”  — KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review

“The mounting suspense of family secrets makes this first novel a breathless read, even as the simple, beautiful words make you want to stop and read the sentences over and over again.”  — BOOKLIST, starred review

“.. Bates writes in clean, understated prose, imbuing her characters with a lasting poignancy.”  — ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

“Judy Fong Bates catches and holds our attention like a teacher of unruly kids: She whispers…. Bates’s unpretentious prose keeps the potential melodrama in check.”  — THE WASHINGTON POST

“An elegant first novel.”  — CHATELAINE

“The simplicity and honesty of Fong Bates' composition... puts the readers right in the midst of 'Dragon Café'.”  — THE PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND

“[Bates’] attention to physical detail is matched by compassionate understanding, which gives real weight to the telling of the submerged, drowning passion hidden in this household.”  — NATIONAL POST

“Fong Bates has emerged with her first novel, a work that often reads like the best finely-crafted memoir.”  — THE GLOBE AND MAIL

“[Midnight at the Dragon Café] is a contribution to the multicultural awareness it records, an engaging addition to our rich literature of immigrants.”  — TORONTO STAR

“A terrific page-turner of a first novel.”  — QUILL & QUIRE

“Judy Fong Bates has created a novel that does what the very best fiction can do — take us into a world we could not have otherwise entered; put us among people we could not otherwise know. As quintessentially Canadian as Alice Munro, and equally delightful to read.”  — SHYAM SELVADURAI

“A deeply affecting debut novel... Bates conveys with pathos and generosity the anger, disappointment, vulnerability and pride of people struggling to balance duty and passion.”  — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY