Jamie Trotter is growing up in Waterloo, Ontario in the 1960s and 1970s. Outwardly he leads an ideal life: he has loving parents, goes to church and school, and plays hockey. When he is ten years old, however, a joke that backfires starts him on an unexpected path to self-discovery. Gradually, his life becomes more complicated. At age seventeen, his first love becomes entangled with doubts about religion and rebellion against his parents, and he is pushed towards a potentially life-altering decision. By turns tragic and wildly funny, Driving Lessons is a Canadian coming-of-age novel in the rich tradition that runs from W. O. Mitchell to Miriam Toews.

Jamie Dopp is an associate professor of Canadian literature at the University of Victoria. He is the author of two novels, three collections of poetry, and many articles and reviews on Canadian and popular subjects. He has co-edited three collections of essays on sports literature: Now is the Winter: Thinking about Hockey with Richard Harrison; and Writing the Body in Motion: A Critical Anthology on Canadian Sport Literature and Not Hockey: Critical Essays on Canada’s Other Sport Literature with Angie Abdou.

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