The Ballad of Danny Wolfe
CBC Books | | Posted: March 13, 2017 2:09 PM | Last Updated: March 30, 2020
Joe Friesen
In 2008, Daniel Richard Wolfe was awaiting trial on two counts of first-degree murder at the Regina Correctional Centre. This wasn't his first time in jail; from his teenage years his life had been marked by stints in and out of prison — with Danny sometimes finding his own way out. This time around, he was orchestrating his boldest move yet: a carefully plotted escape that would send the RCMP on a nationwide manhunt, launching Danny Wolfe to headline-topping notoriety.
The Ballad of Danny Wolfe cinematically traces Danny Wolfe's life, from his birth in Regina to his relationship with his mother, Susan Creeley, a First Nations woman who was forever marked by her experience in the residential school system; to his first brush with the law at the age of four and then his subsequent arrests; to the creation of the Indian Posse, the street gang he founded with a handful of equally disenfranchised Indigenous friends; to the dissonance Danny felt between the traditional world he was born into and the criminal one that became his life; to the dramatic tensions over power and loyalty unfolding in the gang world and within the Posse itself.
Drawing on unprecedented access to the Wolfe family and first-hand accounts from the people closest to the gang leader, Joe Friesen's portrait of Danny Wolfe is at once riveting and timely, nuanced and provocative. (From Signal)
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From the book
With incredible determination and cunning, Danny had just pulled off one of the most spectacular prison breaks in Canadian history. Six gangsters — four of them locked up on murder charges, three of them members of the feared Indian Posse — were on the loose. Danny, who had already served a federal sentence for threatening to kill witnesses, had vowed to take out those who had turned against him this time. Once the implications of this breakout became clear, he would become the most wanted man in the country.
From The Ballad of Danny Wolfe by Joe Friesen ©2016. Published by Signal.