The book that inspired the classic film, Why Shoot the Teacher tells the story of a young man's first collision with reality - an ill-paid teaching assignment in an isolated country school, in the prairies, during the Depression. The young man is, of course, Max Braithwaite, and the story he has to tell is riotous, grim, candid, and infinitely entertaining. While it is perhaps Braithwaite's best-loved book, it is also a vivid evocation of the desolation wrought by the "Dirty Thirties" on the Saskatchewan Prairies, the ordeal of youth among a people bereft of pity and charity, and the human compassion that adds warmth and poignancy to the author's recollections.