Supposedly based on a true event,[1] it is a historical novel centering on a six-year-old boy who gets lost on the Canadian prairie and survives for two months thanks to a mother badger.

Though the Newbery is an award for children's literature, Incident at Hawk's Hill was originally published as an adult novel.

[1]: xvi  Highly intelligent but mute around most people, Ben especially loves his older brother John and mother, Esther.

In the vicinity is a huge, pregnant female badger, which is preparing tunnels and a sett or den in a rock outcropping, before the birth of her offspring.

Ben's adventure is re-interpreted by local whites as a parable of God's care for the lost, and by the First Nations as a tale bringing honor to their chief.

[4] Author and professor Kenneth Kidd, who has studied stories of feral children, believes Eckert may have based his book on local legends.

[5] The article details sufficient information from an 1873 reported incident of a lost boy, found after 10 days living in a badger hole, to be the basis of Eckert's account.

[8] Incident at Hawk's Hill was initially published as an adult novel,[2][9] and it was selected as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book.

The illustrations by John Schoenherr have been used in both the original adult and later children's editions, although the cover art has changed over the years.