The Defender
Audrey Lamrock immigrated to Canada from Holland with her parents when she was six years old. She had a wonderful childhood growing up on a farm and then enjoyed a professional career as a nurse.
Lamrock and her husband Chuck have been married for 51 years and have three children and nine grandchildren. She enjoys volunteering with various organizations in Meaford.
Lamrock chose Midnight at the Dragon Café because of its vivid portrayal of small town Canada and the experiences of our country’s immigrants.
The Book
Set in the 1960s, Judy Fong Bates’s startling debut novel is 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 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 a vivid portrait of a childhood divided by two cultures and touched by unfulfilled longings and unspoken secrets.