The Family Code

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.

With unvarnished and high-voltage prose, The Family Code unabashedly reveals the power and perils of parenting, but also the longing and vulnerability of children.
 

• Ottawa Book Award Finalist 2024
• Best Book of the Year 2023 at 49thShelf and The Miramichi Reader
• Shortlisted for the 2021 Guernica Prize, which recognizes the best literary fiction novel that pushes boundaries and is cutting edge.

Wayne Ng was born in Anishinaabe land in what is commonly known as downtown Toronto to Chinese immigrants who fed him a steady diet of bitter melon and kung fu movies. Ng is a social worker who lives to write, travel, eat, and play, preferably all at the same time. He is an award-winning author and traveller who continues to push his boundaries from the Arctic to the Antarctic. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and goldfish.
 
Ng is the author of THE FAMILY CODE, finalist for the Ottawa Book Award and the Guernica Prize; LETTERS FROM JOHNNY, winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novella and finalist for the Ottawa Book Award; and JOHNNY DELIVERS.
 
Connect with Ng on social media and at waynengwrites dot com.