Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, haunted by his secret knowledge of his mother’s infidelity, is traveling by single-engine plane to visit his father for the first time since the divorce. When the plane crashes, killing the pilot, the sole survivor is Brian. He is alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother had given him as a present. At first consumed by despair and self-pity,...

Instead of being rescued from a plane crash, as in the author's book Hatchet, this story portrays what would have happened to thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson had he been forced to survive a winter in the wilderness with only his survival pack and hatchet.

Two years after surviving a plane crash into the Canadian wilderness, Brian Robeson returns to the wild, where he befriends a wounded dog and is forced to hunt a rogue bear.