Brian is on his way to Canada to visit his estranged father when the pilot of his small prop plane suffers a heart attack. Brian is forced to crash-land the plane in a lake--and finds himself stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness with only his clothing and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present before his departure. Brian had been distraught over his parents' impending divorce and the secret he carries about his mother, but now he is truly...

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

Two years after he survived a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, a sixteen-year-old returns to the wild where he feels he belongs. In a temporary camp on the way to visit his friends, Brian Robeson finds a dog, wounded and whimpering. The dog is badly hurt, and as Brian cares for it, he worries about his friends. His instincts tell him to head north, quickly. With his new companion at his side, and with a terrible, growing sense of unease, he...