Crazy Dave

When he was a teenager, writer Basil Johnston (The Manitous) listened to his grandmother tell stories of how her people, the Ojibway (or Chippewa), were driven from their Wisconsin land to the Cape Croker Reserve in Ontario, where she and Johnston himself grew up. Johnston records this in Crazy Dave, a family and tribal history told mostly through the stories of Johnston's grandmother and her youngest son, David. The willful, inquisitive, mischievous David was born with Down's syndrome, but refused to accept his isolation from the rest of the world. He becomes a metaphor for the Ojibways' refusal to quietly placate white society. (Apr.)