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,...

After his experiences surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness several years earlier, sixteen-year-old Brian finds that he can't seem to fit into "civilization" but must return to the place where he feels he really belongs.