Precious Cargo

Surprising and revelatory non-fiction from a talented young writer whose last book, Cataract City , was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Trillium Book Prize, and was a Globe Best Book and national bestseller.

With his last novel, Cataract City , Craig Davidson established himself as one of our most talented novelists. But in his early thirties, before writing that novel and before his previous work, Rust and Bone , was made into an Oscar-nominated film, Davidson experienced a period of poverty, apparent failure and despair. In this new work of intimate, riveting and timely non-fiction, based loosely on a National Magazine Award-winning article he published in The Walrus , Davidson tells the story of one year in his life--a year during which he came to a new, mature understanding of his own life and his connection to others. Or, as Davidson would say, he became an adult.

     One morning in 2008, desperate and impoverished and living in a one-room basement apartment while trying unsuccessfully to write, Davidson plucked a flyer out of his mailbox that read, "Bus Drivers Wanted." That was the first step towards an unlikely new career: driving a school bus full of special-needs kids for a year. Armed only with a sense of humour akin to that of his charges, a creative approach to the challenge of driving a large, awkward vehicle while corralling a rowdy gang of kids, and surprising but unsentimental reserves of empathy, Davidson takes us along for the ride. He shows us how his evolving relationship with the kids on that bus, each of them struggling physically as well as emotionally and socially, slowly but surely changed his life along with the lives of the "precious cargo" in his care. This is the extraordinary story of that year and those relationships. It is also a moving, important and universal story about how we see and treat people with special needs in our society.