Precious CargoPrecious Cargo

"With his novel, Cataract City, Craig Davidson established himself a talented novelist. But in his early thirties, Davidson experienced a period of poverty, apparent failure and despair. In this memoir, based loosely on an 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. 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. A moving story about how we see and treat people with special needs in our society. Craig Davidson has published four books of literary fiction, including Rust and Bone, which was made into the film of the same name, and Cataract City. He has also published thrillers and horror novels under the pseudonym Nick Cutter. He lives in Toronto."--Publisher's description.