#brian's return

Hatchet

As a child, having your parents divorce sucks. Knowing that your mother was cheating on your father before the divorce sucks more. Fortunately, one little plane accident that gets him stranded in Canada is more than sufficient to take Brian's mind off of things.

Spoiler alert: he doesn't starve to death, get eaten by wolves, or die of dehydration after giving himself dysentery with his poor sanitation habits and lack of tools for purifying water.

Brian's Winter

At the end of Hatchet, Brian was rescued by a pilot who was lured in by the transponder it took Brian several weeks to find. But what if he'd been too stupid to activate the transponder once he'd found it. Or, perhaps it might have been damaged in the crash.

What would have happened? Well, armed with the skills and resilience he'd gained over a summer of wilderness survival, he'd have narrowly avoided dying in the winter as well.

Brian's Return

Imagine being a child who went through the plots of Hatchet and Brian's Winter? You might be pretty messed up right? You might need a good therapist, right? On the other hand you might actually get a therapist with a wilderness fetish instead and soon might find yourself lying to your parents in order to recreate your original adventures.

And, considering the amount of sheer luck you needed to survive on top of the skills you developed, there's a good chance you'd get yourself killed.

Spoiler alert: Brian doesn't die. At least within the book. But as he decides to abandon his original plans to reunite with his former benefactors and instead wander off into the middle of nowhere, there's a good chance he's not going to be long for this cruel world.

Since his benefactors are from Brian’s Winter, I can only assume that Paulsen chose to follow the alternate continuity he created for that book. Either that or the pilot that rescued him in Hatchet introduced him to the Smallhorn family before returning him to his parents.

Overall Thoughts

Altogether a good young adult wilderness survival series. The books are short, straightforward, and both easy and enjoyable to read. Paulsen's love of the wilderness practically shines through every page in the series. And while Brian is both unreasonably lucky and absurdly quick to pick up the skills he needs, the stories don’t really make light of the dangers or difficulties of wilderness survival either.