Gone to the woods : surviving a lost childhood

His name is synonymous with high-stakes wilderness survival stories.

Now Gary Paulsen portrays a series of life-altering moments in his turbulent childhood as his own original survival story.

If not for his summer escape from a shockingly neglectful Chicago upbringing to a North Woods homestead at age five, there never would have been a Hatchet.

Without the encouragement of the librarian who handed him his first book at age thirteen, he may never have become a reader.

Without his desperate teenage enlistment in the army, he would not have discovered his true calling as a storyteller.

A moving and enthralling story of grit and growing up for newcomers and lifelong fans alike, this is the acclaimed author at his rawest and realest.