The acclaimed and bestselling author Craig Davidson discusses his memoir Precious Cargo: My Year of Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077 (Knopf, 2016), with Joseph Planta.

Precious Cargo: My Year of Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077 by Craig Davidson (Knopf, 2016). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Precious Cargo

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, at TheCommentary.ca.

Craig Davidson joins me again. He has written a wonderful memoir, Precious Cargo: My Year of Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077. It recounts the year Mr. Davidson spent driving students to and from school. It’s such a good book. It’s thoughtful, moving, often funny and awfully profound. You get to meet these students, these are what would be called special needs kids, and since it’s a smaller bus and a smaller group, we get to know them well, how they’re seen in the world by their peers, how they see the world, and those wonderful worlds they create for themselves. We learn too about the writer, and how Craig, fresh off the publication of his first works, has to get a job driving a bus to make ends meet. We see a young man dejected by his work, and how this year of driving a bus inspired the writing that came in recent years. I’ll get Craig to tell us about this book, about these remarkable young people, and himself. Craig Davidson has published four books of literary fiction, including Rust and Bone, which was adapted into a critically-acclaimed film, and Cataract City, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Trillium Book Prize. He was last on this program when that book was published in 2013. He also writes novels under the pseudonym Nick Cutter. The website for more is at www.craigdavidson.net. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, in Toronto today, Craig Davidson; Mr. Davidson, good morning.

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