Plot ( The Hatchet )

Brian Robeson is a 13 year old who travels on a Cessna 406 bush plane to visit his father in the oil fields in northern Canada for the summer because his parents were divorced. During the flight, the pilot suffers a heart attack, causing Brian to try to land the plane, but ends up crash-landing into an L-shaped lake in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. He just manages to escape the plane before it sinks into the lake, saving nothing but his hatchet. Throughout the summer, Brian attempts to survive in the endless wilderness with only his hatchet, which was a gift his mother gave him shortly before his plane departed. He figures out how to make fire with the hatchet and makes himself eat whatever food he can find, such as snapping turtle eggs, fish, berries, fruit, rabbits, and birds. He deals with some animals like a porcupine, bear, skunk, moose and eventually becomes a good craftsman, crafting a bow, arrows, and a fishing spear. He also fashions a shelter out of the underside of a rock overhang. During his time alone, Brian struggles with memories of home, and the bittersweet memory of his mother, who Brian caught cheating on his father with somebody else.

When a sudden tornado hits the area, it draws the tail of the plane toward the shore of the lake. Brian makes a raft from a few broken off tree tops to get to the plane. When Brian is cutting his way into the tail of the plane, he drops his hatchet in the lake and dives into get it. Once inside the plane, Brian finds a survival pack with an emergency transmitter, many packs of food, a first aid kit, a pot, and a .22 rifle. Back on shore, Brian activates the transmitter, but he doesn't know how to use it, he thinks it is broken and throws it aside. Later, when Brian is cooking the food packs, a fur buyer arrives in a float plane some time after because he caught the transmitter's signal. He rescues Brian and he returns home after 54 days in the wilderness as a different person. He also becomes very thoughtful, thinking slowly on what to say before speaking. Brian later finds himself marveling at all the food, quantities and variety, at the grocery store. He finally reaches his father at the oil fields, yet he is still unable to talk to him about his mother's affair with another man.