When fifteen-year-old Francis and two younger children lose their way in the wilderness of the Southwest, they face capture at the hands of dangerous men.

After his experiences surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness, sixteen-year-old Brian finds it increasingly difficult to live as a normal high school student and begins planning to return to the place where he feels he really belongs.

Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his father when the single-engine plane in which he is flying crashes. Suddenly, Brian finds himself alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a tattered windbreaker and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present-and the dreadful secret that has been tearing him apart since his parents' divorce. But now Brian has no time for anger, self-pity, or despair-it will take all his know-how...