Book Review: Precious Cargo by Craig Davidson
Title: Precious Cargo: My Year of Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077
Author: Craig Davidson
Release date: May 17th, 2016
Connectivity.
It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it.
Lately, I’m discovering that the Canadian Literary World is almost its own game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. For those unaware of what that is, it is a suggestion that no matter what actor or actress you randomly choose, within six movies, they’ll somehow be connected back to Kevin Bacon.
Case in point for me with Craig Davidson is this – in 2015, I purchased two books at Walmart – Andrew Pyper’s ‘The Demonologist’ and Nick Cutter’s ‘The Troop.’ For those who don’t know, Nick Cutter is a pseudonym for Craig Davidson. As it turns out, Andrew and Craig are great friends, and, in May when I went to Toronto for The Demonologist celebration, Craig kindly attended and in a bit of surrealness, at the get together after, I was honored to be able and sit and talk to Craig and we had an honest-to-goodness heart to heart as though the two of us were life-long friends.
Now, oddly, I could’ve sworn I’d previously read Craig’s memoir, ‘Precious Cargo.’ The reason for that, was I felt a connectivity to the book because of two things – the first was that Craig wrote about the year he spent in Calgary driving a special needs bus for high schoolers. May seem a stretch to some, but when I first heard about this book, I was living in Calgary. The second reason, was that back in my Selkirk College days, I spent two school years ‘training’ a special needs student in weightlifting. I use the ” around training simply because we ended up spending far more time playing table tennis than lifting weights – though we did get in the weight room and he was a strong guy for being mid-50’s – and I spent a lot of time listening to him tell me that the muscle twitches he would get in his forearms were actually implanted alien chips that would signal to the mother ship whenever he was playing table tennis, as that was their intergalactic sport of choice.
When I met Craig, it struck me that I needed to go back and re-read this, but as it turned out, I don’t believe I ever did read the book, so I got to experience it for the first time instead of all over again.
What I liked: The memoir opens with Craig giving us an introspective look at where he was, at that point, in his life. He’d thought he’d made it. He was going to have a novel come out, had an agent, the bucks would roll in and hello world, Craig Davidson is being recognized on every street corner.
Insert sound of record scratching.
Things didn’t go according to that plan. Instead, he found himself with a failed novel at launch, minimal money in his bank account, a beat up car and nobody willing to hire him. So, he got himself hired. He saw an ad where the Calgary School District was looking for bus drivers – NO TRAINING NEEDED! – and bingo, bango, bongo Craig aced basic training.
It’s from there that we get a sugary-sweet look at the relationships Craig developed over that time with the kids who rode his bus. Each one was unique, had their own special needs, but, as Craig phenomenally illustrates, were just kids looking to connect, to make friends and have that ‘normal’ kid childhood.
The majority of the time, the story focuses on Craig’s budding relationship with Jake, a youngster with cerebral palsy, confined to a wheelchair, and living in the aftermath of his mother dying from an unfortunate accident where she was struck by a drunk driver while going for a walk. But the truth is, Craig could’ve focused on any of the kids and this memoir would’ve hit all the high notes. The reason he focused on Jake, was because he developed a relationship with him outside of the bus. They became pals. They played board games together, Craig visited his house often, they went to movies, and as the book progresses, you come to understand that Jake needed Craig’s friendship just as much as Craig needed Jake’s.
It’s a powerful ‘sub-plot,’ which feels odd to categorize it as that, considering it was real life.
And such happens in real life, Craig also focuses on the lows, as much as the highs. On the bus being vandalized. On the looks the bus gets and the way those who won’t take the time to understand these kids treat them.
It was a phenomenal reminder that we are all humans. We all want respect and we are all different in our own ways.
Craig also intersperses the biography aspect with parts of ‘The Seekers,’ an unpublished novel that he wrote during that year. A year where – at first – he believed his time as a writer was all wrapped up and done. But through the connection and new found outlook on life, through those hours driving the bus each day, Craig began to write again, and the kids and their quirks saved an author.
What I didn’t like: I’m not ashamed to admit I shed a number of tears reading this. The ending had me practically bawling, doing my best not to wake my son who was asleep beside me in bed. But the one thing I found, when this was over, was I wished we would’ve had a bit more closure on the Craig-Jake friendship. Of course, it was real life and when summer arrives, plans are made and families flee to all sides of the country or even around the globe. But I simply can’t believe that the last day of school was the last visit Craig and Jake had. I guess we’ll never know.
Why you should buy this: As writers, we go through very high highs and very low lows. Each and everyday we’ll have wins, losses and break evens. This memoir was a powerful (I know I’ve used that word a few times but it’s the only accurate word here) reminder that things can always be worse. That sometimes, in an isolatory endeavour like writing, we need connection to get past the darkness before the dawn, and Craig absolutely nailed how he was pulled forth from the clutches of ‘giving up,’ and was reborn and reinvigorated to return to writing. And us, as readers, are all the more lucky for that.
This is a heartfelt, emotion-layered memoir that showcases the best of us and how at the heart of it all, we’re all kids. We all want to smile, laugh, have friends and enjoy all that life can offer us.
5/5
