As he travels from Hampton on a Cessna bush plane to visit his father in the oil fields of Northern Canada for the summer, the pilot suddenly suffers a massive heart attack and dies.

Brian tries to land the plane, but he runs out of fuel and sees nowhere to go, so ends up crash-landing into an L-shaped lake in the middle of a vast forest.

Throughout the summer, Brian learns how to survive on his own in the vast wilderness, with nothing but his windbreaker and a hatchet—a gift his mother gave him shortly before his plane departed.

[4] He discovers how to make fire with the hatchet, and eats whatever food he can find, from rabbits and ruffed grouse – which he nicknames “fool-birds” – to turtle eggs, fish and berries.

Simultaneously, he deals with many of Nature's dangers, including mosquitoes, a porcupine, two huge bears – one of which is a mother with her cubs, a pack of three wolves, a skunk, a bad-tempered female moose, and even a tornado.

Once inside the plane, Brian finds a survival pack that includes an array of tools, additional food, an emergency transmitter, and a .22 AR-7 rifle.

The epilogue explains that Brian had spent the remainder of the summer with his father but did not disclose his mother's affair, and how surviving on his own for a total of 54 days had a permanent effect on him for the better.