Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books

Content Warning: Guts includes detailed portrayals of survival situations, including human fear, danger, injury, and death. The book includes graphic descriptions of hunting, trapping, fishing, and killing wild animals, as well as processing the bodies for food and tools.

Gary James Paulsen, author of the beloved wilderness survival bildungsroman Hatchet, wants to explain the inspiration behind the middle-grade novel that propelled him into the spotlight. As a result of the popularity of Hatchet, Paulsen receives letters from fans asking “about those parts of my personal life that paralleled Brian’s” (Guts: Foreword). According to Paulsen, readers crave specifics about his life, the events that inspired Hatchet, and how survival is won in the wild. Thus, Guts was written to answer these questions and satiate his readers.

Hatchet opens with a heart attack. Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is flying over remote Canadian wilderness on a Cessna 406 bush plane when the pilot has a heart attack and dies. Brian is forced to pilot the tiny craft, ultimately crash-landing on a remote lake and swimming to safety. To explain the inspiration for the pilot’s graphic death in Hatchet’s opening scenes, and to lend reason to the author’s in-depth knowledge of what happens to heart attack victims, Paulsen describes his background as a rural emergency ambulance driver.