I Am Still Alive

I Am Still Alive is a novel for young readers by Kate Alice Marshall, published in 2018 and set in a remote stretch of wilderness far from any road or town.

Jess is stranded in the woods with very few supplies and only her dog for company. Her survival skills are limited, she has disabilities that make physical labour harder than it would otherwise be, and winter is closing in. Her father is dead, killed by a man who then left her to die in the forest, and nobody alive knows where she is. The novel follows the practical business of staying alive away from help, from water and shelter to fire and food, while Jess works out how she is going to deal with a man who assumes he has already taken care of her.

Marshall writes in short chapters that move between the present situation and the events that brought Jess to the forest, so the reader learns what happened at roughly the speed she works out what to do next. It is a survival story in which the wilderness and another person are competing dangers.