Brian's Return

Brian's Return is the fourth novel in Gary Paulsen's sequence about Brian Robeson, published in 1999. The earlier books follow a boy who survives a plane crash and then a long period alone in the wilderness.

Brian has come home, and ordinary life is not working. Readers of Hatchet and its sequels know what he was able to do alone in the north woods, where every problem had a practical solution and the consequences of getting it wrong were immediate. Back in high school he cannot make sense of the routines, the noise or the way people treat him, and he feels more disconnected in a corridor full of classmates than he ever did by himself in the bush. The answer he arrives at is to return to the country where he learned how to live, and the novel follows him through the preparations and then the journey. The book is about the difficulty of belonging anywhere after an experience that nobody else shares.

Paulsen writes short, plain sentences about surviving with very little, and the series is unusual in following its hero back into ordinary life rather than ending with the rescue.