Hatchet

Hatchet is a young-adult wilderness survival novel by the American writer Gary Paulsen. It was first published in September 1987 by Bradbury Press and received a Newbery Honor in 1988.

Brian Robeson is the thirteen-year-old son of divorced parents, and he is travelling from Hampton on a Cessna 406 bush plane to spend the summer with his father in the north. The pilot suffers a heart attack, the plane crashes, and Brian is left alone in the Canadian wilderness with a hatchet his mother gave him as a present. Most of the novel follows him working out how to stay alive: finding water, food and shelter, learning what the country will and will not give him, and dealing with his own mistakes. The experience also gives him time to think about his parents and about a secret he has been carrying since before he left, and the book is as much about that as it is about survival.

The novel is the first of five books about Brian, and the others include The River, Brian's Winter, Brian's Return and Brian's Hunt.