The House Filler

A family saga set in China during the most tumultuous time of the twentieth century including the Japanese invasion, the civil war, and the Communist takeover.

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.

The House Filler is a moving and powerful portrayal of one family’ s struggle to survive in the face of an historical upheaval and political oppression.

Born and raised in China, Tong Ge moved to Canada in the late 1980s as an international student, earning a Master of Science degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1992. Since 2012, she has written under both her real name and the pen name Tong Ge, publishing poetry, prose, and short stories in English and Chinese across North America, England, and Taiwan. A recipient of six literary awards and a finalist for five others. Her debut novel, The House Filler, was published in Canada in 2023. It is a finalist for the 2023 Eyelands Book Awards and the 2024 Canadian Book Club Awards for fiction, and has won the 2025 Maxy Award, 2024 Independent Press Award for new fiction, the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (NAIWE) Award for Literary Fiction and second place in the 2025 BookFest Award for literary-historical fiction.