Guts

Brian's Saga

by Gary Paulsen

Guess what -- Gary Paulsen was being kind to Brian. In Guts, Gary tells the real stories behind the Brian books, the stories of the adventures that inspired him to write Brian Robeson's working as an emergency volunteer; the death that inspired the pilot's death in Hatchet; plane crashes he has seen and near-misses of his own. He describes how he made his own bows and arrows, and takes readers on his first hunting trips, showing the wonder and solace of nature along with his hilarious mishaps and mistakes. He shares special memories, such as the night he attracted every mosquito in the county, or how he met the moose with a sense of humor, and the moose who made it personal. There's a handy chapter on "Eating Eyeballs and Guts or The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition." Recipes included. Readers may wonder how Gary Paulsen survived to write all of his books -- well, it took guts.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Adventure, Survival, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Autobiography

162 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Gary James Paulsen was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, best known for coming-of-age stories about the wilderness. He was the author of more than 200 books and wrote more than 200 magazine articles and short stories, and several plays, all primarily for teenagers. He won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1997 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

There seems to be a river of rage just below the surface in moose that has no basis in logic, or at least any logic that I can see.

this is a great sentence. and a great story that inspires this quote. montambo told me to read this, so i did. it is filling the "nonfiction" slot in my 10-work annotated bibliography assignment. this book is full of wonderful survival stories that illustrate the importance of staying out of the wilderness if you are unprepared for its hazards. this is my other favorite quote: ... soon the plane was filled with small white feathers and flying dogs and swear words and blood.

i am not even going to explain that one to you, because it had me laughing out loud and i think it's very important to read it for oneself. i'm still giggling a little. in closing, if you are leaving your house, i don't care if you are only going out for some juice, BRING MATCHES. seriously, do it.

come to my blog!

[Josiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Due to clamor among his fans to hear the true stories of how Gary Paulsen gained the intimate knowledge of wilderness survival he wrote about to such convincing effect in Hatchet and the other Brian's Saga novels, the author released Father Water, Mother Woods: Essays on Fishing and Hunting in the North Woods in the 1990s. It was well-received, but readers lobbied for more. They craved specifics about the incidents in Mr. Paulsen's life that directly inspired thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson's harrowing adventures in the Canadian bush, adventures that could easily have killed the boy before rescuers arrived. Thus Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books was born, a memoir specifically of the events that started the author thinking about writing a novel featuring a kid forced by circumstances to survive in the wilderness, far from the comfort and protection of modern urbania. For readers who want the scoop on Hatchet, Guts has everything you could want...and more.

"The wilderness pulled at me—still does—in a way that at first baffled me and then became a wonder for me."

—Guts, P. 71

Gary Paulsen led a life of more variety than almost anyone, and volunteer paramedic in the Colorado boondocks was among his myriad occupations. As the only first responder close enough to react meaningfully in an emergency, Paulsen bore responsibility for the lives of many. This was where he learned about heart attacks, the most common malady of patients he was called to help. Paulsen could do nothing to save the majority of myocardial infarction victims, and one death that happened right in front of him haunted the author long after, coming through in Brian's experience with the pilot of his small plane who suffered a heart attack and died while their vehicle was airborne. As a paramedic and as an officer in the U.S. military, Paulsen also witnessed numerous plane crashes, some fatal but most not, and had a scare while on tour for his 1986 Newbery Honor book Dogsong when the engine of the small plane he was a passenger in sputtered and died. The pilot landed without any problem, but the helplessness of hanging 3,000 feet up in the air in a plane that had no engine would inform Brian's panicked response when the same thing happened to him with dire consequences. Another life-or-death situation involving a small plane saw an intrepid bush pilot flying into an insane winter storm in Alaska to rescue Paulsen and his sled dogs during the Iditarod. The incident leaves an indelible impression even as the scene it sets is downright comical. By the time Paulsen was honorably discharged from the military and had trained to earn his pilot's license, he was well on his way to knowing enough to write intelligently about Brian's plane crash.

Bizarre animal assaults play a pivotal role in Brian's Saga, from rampaging moose to hungry bears, from surly skunks to monstrous swarms of mosquitos. Paulsen relates anecdotes about his own encounters with these assailants and more, but the most memorable may be when a massive cow moose waylaid him on a stormy night in the Alaskan bush. The attack was unprovoked and nightmarishly prolonged, as attacks feel when blow after vicious blow is hurting us and there's nothing we can do to stop it. The moose had Paulsen facedown in the snow and would not relent from stomping on him, bloodying the helpless musher and cracking his bones. "She completely worked me over. I didn't count the kicks and stomps but there were dozens. She stopped after a bit and I peeked at her, outlined against the snow, and she was staring at me, listening for my breath, and when at last I could hold it no longer and had to breathe again she heard it and renewed the attack. I don't know how long she kept after me. It seemed hours, days. I lay as still as possible, trying to hide my breathing, but she kept coming back until I thought I was dead—and then she backed off. Thinking she was gone, I tried a small move, but she jumped me again. Finally I think she was convinced I was finished and she moved off into the forest." Sometimes all you can do when you're assaulted that way is curl up in a trembling little ball and hope to survive, and that's how Paulsen (and Brian) lived through their run-ins with lunatic moose. The only way to endure in a world that threatens your existence is to adapt and learn from its painful lessons, to not make serious mistakes twice. "The solution to facing all these dangers, a solution that came very rapidly to me and to Brian, is knowledge. It can come from anywhere; from reading, from listening to people or from personal experience. However it comes, the knowledge must be there." Accumulating wisdom is the way to fend off danger whether you're in the wilderness or the safety of suburbia, which presents its own perils. Learning to avoid pitfalls is a trait possessed by every survivor.

Brian's ability to stay alive in the bush hinged on fashioning functional hunting weapons with no one to teach him how, and Paulsen recounts his own experiences in this area. Crafting a usable bow and arrows from wood is hard work, and learning to hunt with them is more difficult still, but Paulsen and Brian each eventually did. The process requires attention to detail, and the author doesn't scrimp on explaining how to carve the wood and arrows just right. If the feathers aren't the proper shape and style, your arrows won't fly accurately. Once you make a kill, you have to clean and cook the animal, and that's at least as much work as carving handmade weapons. Paulsen relates his long, arduous journey after killing his first deer with a bow and arrow as a fifteen-year-old, dragging the dead buck that weighed more than him miles from the scene of the hunt to where he'd stashed his bicycle. It's hard to imagine how he biked four miles home while attempting to keep two hundred pounds of dead deer in balance, but Paulsen at that age was already adapting to the ways of nature, learning to be inconspicuous and predict what would happen next in the drama of the natural world around him. He knew it was essential to never stop growing and improving. "To learn, to be willing to learn how a thing works, to understand an animal in nature, or how to write a book or run a dog team or sail a boat, to always keep learning is truly wonderful." This from someone who was not a diligent student in school, but had a passion to learn from nature the grand truths of life that school teachers rarely address. Spending time in school does not always equate to learning.

Revolting food choices were part of life for Brian after his plane went down, but starvation pushed him to choke down edibles he wouldn't have wanted to look at in his previous life. Paulsen had high standards for the realism of Brian's Saga: "When I set out to write the Brian books I was concerned that everything that happened to Brian should be based on reality, or as near reality as fiction could be. I did not want him to do things that wouldn't or couldn't really happen in his situation. Consequently I decided to write only of things that had happened to me or things I purposely did to make certain they would work for Brian." This includes the gross experiment of eating raw turtle eggs, which didn't end well for Paulsen. His commitment to authenticity in Brian's Saga was admirable, and stems from the undoubtedly finest philosophical observation in Guts, made in an earlier chapter. "We have grown away from knowledge, away from knowing what something is really like, toward knowing only what somebody else says it is like. There seems to be a desire to ignore the truth in favor of drama." These words have so many practical applications, I hardly know where to begin. We outsource our religious, political, and social opinions to others who tell us how they think things are, not bothering to independently inform ourselves so we can challenge the pundits when they reason wrongly. Society has grown away from self-discovered knowledge and toward parroting the talking points of professional opinion givers, and that's not healthy. When we reject the nuance of reality in favor of black-and-white systemic ideology, we don't further education as Paulsen promotes it; we further ignorance, hampering our ability to recognize our errors of logic and reverse positions if the facts demand it. Gary Paulsen writes with uncompromising regard for truth, and that's why I love his work. Guts ends with a chapter on rudimentary cooking methods in the wild—how to heat water, make meat or fish stew, and cook using wood planks, a roasting spit, or a pot made from birch bark. It's important not to waste any part of the animals you hunt, because a next meal is never promised in the great outdoors. Paulsen concludes with an anecdote about the time he roasted buffalo meat for himself while employed as a movie production laborer, enjoying the fine meal under a starry night sky with a friend and reflecting on how it must have felt for early man to do the same every night. That started him thinking of writing a story about a modern-day kid having to survive under those conditions, and the rest, as they say, was history.

The wisdom of Guts isn't as enlightening or plentiful as that in Woodsong, an earlier Gary Paulsen memoir of wilderness life, and the stories aren't nearly as emotional, but it's a good book. I'd give it at least two and a half stars, and strongly consider the full three. Gary Paulsen created something unforgettable in his Brian's Saga books, and I have loved them. They changed me for the better, and that can't be said of most literature. We've never seen a writing talent quite like Gary Paulsen, and we are oh so lucky to have him.

[Malbadeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geesh I forgot that the first story in this book has about a bazillion reference to death, including a scene wherein a plane breaks in half and the people "spill out" into the water and are eaten by sharks and a really sad scene where a 50 year old man dies of a heart attack (described with vivid detail) at the dinner table?
I remembered when I was reading it aloud to the 3rd graders and they keept asking "is this real"?! and I kept having to say "yes".
that being said he does a pretty great job of tying in his experiences to the fictional texts they inspired.
oh wait! dogs. there are dogs that get thrown. from the back of the plane to the front of the plane. He picks them up and throws them multipule times. it needs to be done, it's for their own good. but still. DOGS GET THROWN!

[Aj Sterkel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gary Paulsen is one of the authors who made me a reader. I hated reading when I was a kid, but I loved the woods. I liked survival stories and learning about nature. Hatchet was one of the few books that I actually enjoyed. After reading Hatchet a few dozen times, I moved on to the rest of Gary Paulsen’s Brian books.

In Guts, Paulsen talks about the real-life events that inspired him to write the Brian series. He has lived an unusual life, mostly in remote places. He writes about his time as a paramedic in rural Colorado (very close to where I currently live). He also tells stories about surviving in the wilderness in Minnesota and Alaska. Gary Paulsen has actually lived through everything that happens in the Brian books. This memoir covers his experiences with heart failure, plane crashes, animal attacks, and hunting mishaps.

Paulsen’s writing style is conversational. I read this book straight through without putting it down because it felt like I was listening to a friend tell stories. I laughed out loud several times. The author has a way of understating deadly problems that makes me laugh. Then I feel terrible about laughing at his near-death experiences. They’re funny, though!

My favorite story is the one where Paulsen and his 14 sled dogs got trapped in a blizzard and needed to be rescued by plane. The dogs were loose inside the plane and lost their minds when it took off and started bouncing around in the storm. During a 20-minute flight, the dogs destroyed the plane’s interior. They bit the pilot and almost caused the plane to crash. Not cool, dogs. The moral of the story: dogs on planes know no chill.

My second-favorite story is the one where Gary wanted to know if it was possible to eat turtle eggs. He tried eating one and threw up. His dog caught the puke and swallowed it before it hit the ground. Again, not cool, dogs.

“We have grown away from knowledge, away from knowing what something is really like, toward knowing only what somebody else says it is like. There seems to be a desire to ignore the truth in favor of drama.” – Guts

If you’re not interested in hunting or wilderness survival, then this book might not be for you, but for me, it was perfect. It’s a quick, funny read that distracted me from the rest of the world. You’d probably get the most out of Guts if you’ve read the Brian books, but it’s not completely necessary. The stories are entertaining on their own.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I taught seventh grade middle school for 35 years and during part of that time the sixth grade read Hatchet. Naturally when they came to me the following year some were hooked on Gary Paulsen books. From time-to-time I find myself reading teen books out of habit and desire, I have a list of authors I still enjoy and Gary Paulsen is one. His books have always made me feel I was sitting listening to him tell me the story.

If you have read or you know someone who has read the "Brian" books I would recommend this book by Paulsen. In it Mr. Paulsen explains how some of the situations Brain finds himself in are based on his own life experiences. Although I purchased the book from a school book club I would also suggest it is good reading for any of the hunters in your life. It is fascinating to read how Mr. Paulsen made his own bow and arrows, as well as, teaching himself to hunt with this homemade equipment through trial and error.

Finally it is a quick read for those reluctant readers. 150 pages and not full pages of reading. Enjoy something different.

[Sylvia Hendricks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have met Gary Paulsen and love his books. Guts was entertaining, serious, and filled with information about wilderness survival that I simply did not know. A few times, this book made me laugh out load!

[Courtney Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gary Paulsen shares countless stories of hunting, fishing, dogsled racing, and other adventures that inspired him to write Hatchet and other books. Incredible to read about his own life experience, but some of it was nasty and graphic. Fine read.

[Cem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book. This book is one of the best books that I have read. It is great story written from Gary Paulsen which is a good writer. Everybody please read this book if you like fun stories.

[Topher · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Guts’ by Gary Paulsen was a considerable novel. I really liked the overall story line as well as the action packed, real life situations Gary Paulsen experienced. The book was based of a similar, well know, novel ‘Hatchet’, which Gary Paulsen wrote 15 years before publishing ‘Guts’. During the book, Paulsen describes his near-death experiences in the wilderness chapter-to-chapter making the reader feel as if they where standing right their, with him. Each chapter is based of real life events which where published in his bestseller ‘Hatchet’, but from the perspective of the main character Brain Robeson, a 13 year-old boy. One reason I really liked this book, was because of the action. Normally when you see a biography it doesn’t seem very interesting, but Gary Paulsen did an outstanding job.

The book starts with a chapter called, “Heart Attacks, Plane Crashes, and Flying”. It starts by describing Gary Paulsen’s life before he was fortunate enough to become a successful writer. He lived with his wife in a small prairie town in the middle of farm country, and with so much down time, Paulsen volunteered as a medic with only a small ambulance, which was donated by the city. Gary Paulsen, being the only service available for thousands of square miles, had to witness many deaths mostly form heart attacks. And sadly, Paulsen was the only hope except for the city helicopter, which sometimes took hours to arrive.

This book was a great read, and I recommend it for someone who’s looking for an easy quick-read. If theirs one thing I learned from Gary Paulsen’s life, it was that well….it took guts.

[Jacob Runyon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super quick read. Loved learning about the true stories surrounding Hatchet, one of my favorite books of all time. Writing is a a bit rambly, but not too bad

[Anne Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are a Xennial, you were probably assigned “Hatchet” as required reading in elementary school. If you stuck 100 Xennials in a room and said, “what do you remember about Hatchet,” probably no one will raise their hand about Brian eating turtle eggs or fashioning a homemade spear for hunting fish — but everyone will remember the pilot having a heart attack and crashing the plane, and Brian’s eventual return to the submerged plane for supplies accompanied by a vivid description of the pilot’s rotting corpse surrounded by hungry fish.

This book — along with “On My Honor,” “A Taste of Blackberries” and “After the Bomb” — really did have teachers in their cheerful denim jumpers, perms and seasonal pins handing out second-hand trauma right before recess in the ‘80 and ‘90s.

I can probably credit Gary Paulsen for my love of wilderness/survival stories, and reading about the real-life events that inspired “Hatchet” and other books was fascinating (and a little concerning). It reinforces the old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

[Dan Prillwitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Guts” is a book written about the events that led up to Gary Paulsen writing about Brian Robeson’s story in the books: Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, and Brian’s Return. The first chapter is about the experiences Gary has had with airplanes which is how Brian ends up in the wilderness alone in “Hatchet.” The whole book is basically about all the times Gary has had encounters in the wilderness and how he had to cope with the problems he had.

The main character in “Guts” is Gary Paulsen. There are other characters but they are not as important.

The story is not really written in a set place. Gary talks about all the times he is in the wilderness so you could kind of say it is taken place in the wilderness but it is never really said. It is written from the time he was a young teen to a middle age adult.

The main theme in this book is determination. Gary is saying how he has had so many tough times in the wilderness and he had to be determined to make it out alive. Another theme could be creativeness because Gary has to come up with ways to cook things, and make things while he is out in the wilderness.

Overall, I thought that this book was very good. I always was putting myself in Gary’s shoes asking myself what I would do. I would recommend it to people who like to read books that are written about the wild and like adventure.

[Jilane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I know why the Hatchet and Brian books did not appeal to me. This book is a nonfiction book about how many of the scenarios and situations came about in Hatchet. Very interesting but not my cup of tea. Hunting and the wilderness do not have an appeal to me. But the stories were well told and and interesting.

I did notice something in this book though. Paulsen talks often in his book about earning money for food and school clothes as a child. I am a mother and thought, "That is great that he is helping his parents out. He is older. He must have lived during the depression." But other clues lead me to believe he is not that old. (He was in the army as a young man during the Korean War.) There is one sentence in the entire book in which he discusses his parents. He said that he had to hunt because his parents were in one of their drunks. His parents were drunks, did not hold jobs, and left him to fend for himself at an early age. I am impressed with what he has done with his life. Very interesting book.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

After I read this book, I went through a survivalist phase.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't read Hatchet as a kid. In fact, I still haven't read it. I will be getting to it soon, but until then I figured I would give Guts a try, seeing how it has gotten no small praise from other accounts I read of the books. Hatchet has come up enough in falconry circles to make me curious about it, and inevitably this book came up as well. Albeit, it has nothing at all to say about falconry in it. It does reaffirm my terror of moose, though.

This book consists of a series of stories that illustrate how Gary Paulsen's own life influenced the books which he wrote. The stories are to a point rough to read - he pulls few punches in describing how difficult life in the wild can be. The fact that the stories are true adds a veneer to them that wouldn't otherwise be there. People do go through this. They survive it sometimes. Nature doesn't care about you, and it cannot be tamed or subdued. You need to have your wits about you, and an awfully strong stomach.

I think this would be an excellent book to recommend to any younger kid to get them reading. I think it lends itself to kids reluctant towards reading, as it is an easy read, but also full of compelling details that draw the person in. There's plane crashes, moose attacks, deer attacks, people freezing to death and starving. There's eating gross foods - including eyeballs and turtle eggs - and hunting with a bow carved by your own hand. Who doesn't want to read such an exciting adventure?

[Landon Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite quote in the book is "hunting when it wasn't necessarily pleasant to hunt; hunting because he had to, hunting to live." The book so far has been filled with a few tragic events like a little boy being stabbed in the chest by a deer with his horns. Gary paulsen talks about of life lessons in this book like how to hunt, fish, catch, and many other things. One of the things in the book I can see coming up soon is i feel like he is going to get attacked by a buck himself that is going to hit him really hard. The parts of this book ia ma enjoying are the parts when he is out in the woods and he is hunting and going through dangerous events like the moose hitting him off his sled and stomping on him and trying to kill him. But the one thing i do dislike about his book is that everytime he does something he has to take time and tell how it is connected to the book and it really takes the intensity and your focus away from the book. i would recommend this book to everyone of my classmates because it really gets your blood pumping when he is in intense moments like him getting attacked or him seeing something dangerous.

[Reynaldo Calvillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Guts is about the real-life occurrences that Gary Paulsen encountered in his youth and middle age. Paulsen's other books like Hatchet, Brian's Return, and Brian's Winter were inspired by his experiences in the wilderness. The book starts off describing his love for planes and flying, and how he came about learning to fly. He then goes on to explain some painful encounters while he was in the wilderness. The last part of the book he explains how he hunted and how he prepared- if at all- his "food".
I thought it was a good book mainly because it was an easy read but also his style of writing is easy to follow. It was very easy to picture a paragraph of his writing in my head something that I struggle to do when reading. It's hard to pick a favorite chapter because they were all very intriguing. If I had to choose a favorite chapter it would be the Moose attack. I enjoyed it because it sounded like an awful thing to have to go through. It seemed like the moose was going for the kill; I mean who knew that Moose were so aggressive towards anything that gave them a motive. For example, he mentions how while he was training for the Iditarod he witnessed a Moose charge at a tree and absolutely demolish it until there was nothing left of it. I would recommend this book to anyone who's interested in learning some survival skills or anyone in general just because of the imagery in this book.

[Caleb Shumaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guts has some really crazy stories that make it hard to realize that the book is actually a non-fiction. Gary does a really good job describing these events. Like when he was starving in the forest and said that he would eat anything that would make a normal person vomit just to survive. This really painted a picture in my head of how hungry Gary was and how desperate he was for any edible substance. When Gary got attacked by the cow moose when he was riding his sled of dogs I was astonished. If I was in Gary's position I would have never believed that I would make it out alive. Just picturing getting stomped by a moose like that using Gary's words made me cringe inside. The story about Gary watching the child feed the half tamed moose at the park and how the moose freaked out when the child made him reach for the candy had me in disbelief. I couldn't imagine that a moose would stab a child it's pointed hooves just for making it reach further to get the candy. The story really showed me how crazy of a life Gary has lived. For him to live through all of these crazy stories and tell about them is really amazing.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s always so cool to me to read a book written by someone with direct experience for a subject, he writes about how he hunted, drove dog sleds, and worked as an emergency paramedic, and it’s all his own life he didn’t read about it or watch other people do it to learn about it, he does talk about other peoples experiences but they relate back to something he experienced, something he knows because he lived it. I don’t know it’s just so cool to see a nonfiction book about survival and nature so purely communicated from someone’s life to page.

[Marian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I hunted a great deal with rifles and shot guns and I trapped and snared animals for a living. There are people who say that is wrong, and perhaps they are right - though virtually nothing in nature dies of old age except man and I'm not sure of the morality or immorality of their claim or why it is better for a coyote to kill a rabbit than it is for a man who will also eat the rabbit-but these questions did not exist then for most people."
Powerful words.
This book was great, I loved the Hatchet series as a kid.

[Nile Schuett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guts is the story about Gary Paulsen's life and experiences. We learn about how the books about Brian Roberson came to be and how the ideas came to mind. Paulsen swears nothing in the books are made up and he has experinced everything that has happened in this story. I really love how he holds nothing back. He includes every detail about what happened. I enjoy about how he teaches the reader how he did things. He explained how he made his own bow and arrows. He even told us how he fire hardened the tips of some. He is a really good writer and a true sportsman.

[Tyler Randall]

Guts by Gary Paulsen is a very intresting book about the times that he lived in Alaska, but it's also about Paulsens' other books that he wrote like Hatchet. In Guts, Paulsen talks about the hardships and struggles he had to go through when he lived in Alaska. He writes about a guy named Brian, but all the experiences that Brain went through were all experiences that Gary had went through himself such as plane crashes, and other near missed that he went through living in the wilderness.
In the book, Paulsen also talks about the funny but bad incidents that happened while he was staying the in wilderness like how he attrached millions of mosquitoes, or when he ran into a moose with a "sense of humor". It's crazy to think how he could have survived everything that happened to him while he was away like being trampled by a moose or surviving a plane crash.

[Annina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Im Hotel ausgeliehen: Kenne zwar die Hatchet-Bücher nicht, dieses war aber sehr spannend und perfekt für einen Abend am Pool.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gary Paulsen uses some life experiences in his story. He uses the character Brian Robersen to go through his experiences. Some of his life experiences are a moose attack, a plane crash, and a paramedic. Some of the challenges he had against was a guy named Harvey was having a chest pain and he was rescued by Brian but had later died. This story mainly happened in the Alaskan Territory.

[Lisa Frendahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but not well organized. Also very short.

[Emily Joyce]

My only complaint is that I wish it was longer. This guy's is rad

[Josiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Due to widespread clamor among fans to hear the true stories of how Gary Paulsen gained the intimate knowledge of wilderness survival he wrote about in Hatchet and the other Brian's Saga novels, the author released Father Water, Mother Woods: Essays on Fishing and Hunting in the North Woods in the 1990s. It was well-received, but readers lobbied for more. They craved specifics about the incidents in Mr. Paulsen's life that directly inspired thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson's harrowing adventures in the Canadian bush, adventures that could easily have killed the boy before rescuers arrived. Thus Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books was born, a memoir specifically of the events that started the author thinking about writing a novel featuring a kid forced by circumstances to survive in the wilderness, far from the comfort and protection of modern urbania. For readers who want the scoop on Hatchet, Guts has everything you could want...and more.

"The wilderness pulled at me—still does—in a way that at first baffled me and then became a wonder for me."

—Guts, P. 71

Gary Paulsen led a life of more variety than almost anyone, and volunteer paramedic in the Colorado boondocks was among his myriad occupations. As the only first responder close enough to react meaningfully in an emergency, Paulsen bore responsibility for the lives of many. This was where he learned about heart attacks, the most common malady of patients he was called to help. Paulsen could do nothing to save the majority of myocardial infarction victims, and one death that happened right in front of him haunted the author long after, coming through in Brian's experience with the pilot of his small plane who suffered a heart attack and died while their vehicle was airborne. As a paramedic and as an officer in the U.S. military, Paulsen also witnessed numerous plane crashes, some fatal but most not, and had a scare while on tour for his 1986 Newbery Honor book Dogsong when the engine of the small plane he was a passenger in sputtered and died. The pilot landed without any problem, but the helplessness of hanging 3,000 feet up in the air in a plane that had no engine would inform Brian's panicked response when the same thing happened to him with dire consequences. Another life-or-death situation involving a small plane saw an intrepid bush pilot flying into an insane winter storm in Alaska to rescue Paulsen and his sled dogs during the Iditarod. The incident leaves an indelible impression even as the scene it sets is downright comical. By the time Paulsen was honorably discharged from the military and had trained to earn his pilot's license, he was well on his way to knowing enough to write intelligently about Brian's plane crash.

Bizarre animal assaults play a pivotal role in Brian's Saga, from rampaging moose to hungry bears, from surly skunks to monstrous swarms of mosquitos. Paulsen relates anecdotes about his own encounters with these assailants and more, but the most memorable may be when a massive cow moose waylaid him on a stormy night in the Alaskan bush. The attack was unprovoked and nightmarishly prolonged, as attacks feel when blow after vicious blow is hurting us and there's nothing we can do to stop it. The moose had Paulsen facedown in the snow and would not relent from stomping on him, bloodying the helpless musher and cracking his bones. "She completely worked me over. I didn't count the kicks and stomps but there were dozens. She stopped after a bit and I peeked at her, outlined against the snow, and she was staring at me, listening for my breath, and when at last I could hold it no longer and had to breathe again she heard it and renewed the attack. I don't know how long she kept after me. It seemed hours, days. I lay as still as possible, trying to hide my breathing, but she kept coming back until I thought I was dead—and then she backed off. Thinking she was gone, I tried a small move, but she jumped me again. Finally I think she was convinced I was finished and she moved off into the forest." Sometimes all you can do when you're assaulted that way is curl up in a trembling little ball and hope to survive, and that's how Paulsen (and Brian) lived through their run-ins with lunatic moose. The only way to endure in a world that threatens your existence is to adapt and learn from its painful lessons, to not make serious mistakes twice. "The solution to facing all these dangers, a solution that came very rapidly to me and to Brian, is knowledge. It can come from anywhere; from reading, from listening to people or from personal experience. However it comes, the knowledge must be there." Accumulating wisdom is the way to fend off danger whether you're in the wilderness or the safety of suburbia, which presents its own perils. Learning to avoid pitfalls is a trait possessed by every survivor.

Brian's ability to stay alive in the bush hinged on fashioning functional hunting weapons with no one to teach him how, and Paulsen recounts his own experiences in this area. Crafting a usable bow and arrows from wood is hard work, and learning to hunt with them is more difficult still, but Paulsen and Brian each eventually did. The process requires attention to detail, and the author doesn't scrimp on explaining how to carve the wood and arrows just right. If the feathers aren't the proper shape and style, your arrows won't fly accurately. Once you make a kill, you have to clean and cook the animal, and that's at least as much work as carving handmade weapons. Paulsen relates his long, arduous journey after killing his first deer with a bow and arrow as a fifteen-year-old, dragging the dead buck that weighed more than him miles from the scene of the hunt to where he'd stashed his bicycle. It's hard to imagine how he biked four miles home while attempting to keep two hundred pounds of dead deer in balance, but Paulsen at that age was already adapting to the ways of nature, learning to be inconspicuous and predict what would happen next in the drama of the natural world around him. He knew it was essential to never stop growing and improving. "To learn, to be willing to learn how a thing works, to understand an animal in nature, or how to write a book or run a dog team or sail a boat, to always keep learning is truly wonderful." This from someone who was not a diligent student in school, but had a passion to learn from nature the grand truths of life that school teachers rarely address. Spending time in school does not always equate to learning.

Revolting food choices were part of life for Brian after his plane went down, but starvation pushed him to choke down edibles he wouldn't have wanted to look at in his previous life. Paulsen had high standards for the realism of Brian's Saga: "When I set out to write the Brian books I was concerned that everything that happened to Brian should be based on reality, or as near reality as fiction could be. I did not want him to do things that wouldn't or couldn't really happen in his situation. Consequently I decided to write only of things that had happened to me or things I purposely did to make certain they would work for Brian." This includes the gross experiment of eating raw turtle eggs, which didn't end well for Paulsen. His commitment to authenticity in Brian's Saga was admirable, and stems from the undoubtedly finest philosophical observation in Guts, made in an earlier chapter. "We have grown away from knowledge, away from knowing what something is really like, toward knowing only what somebody else says it is like. There seems to be a desire to ignore the truth in favor of drama." These words have so many practical applications, I hardly know where to begin. We outsource our religious, political, and social opinions to others who tell us how they think things are, not bothering to independently inform ourselves so we can challenge the pundits when they reason wrongly. Society has grown away from self-discovered knowledge and toward parroting the talking points of professional opinion givers, and that's not healthy. When we reject the nuance of reality in favor of black-and-white systemic ideology, we don't further education as Paulsen promotes it; we further ignorance, hampering our ability to recognize our errors of logic and reverse positions if the facts demand it. Gary Paulsen writes with uncompromising regard for truth, and that's why I love his work. Guts ends with a chapter on rudimentary cooking methods in the wild—how to heat water, make meat or fish stew, and cook using wood planks, a roasting spit, or a pot made from birch bark. It's important not to waste any part of the animals you hunt, because a next meal is never promised in the great outdoors. Paulsen concludes with an anecdote about the time he roasted buffalo meat for himself while employed as a movie production laborer, enjoying the fine meal under a starry night sky with a friend and reflecting on how it must have felt for early man to do the same every night. That started him thinking of writing a story about a modern-day kid having to survive under those conditions, and the rest, as they say, was history.

The wisdom of Guts isn't as enlightening or plentiful as that in Woodsong, an earlier Gary Paulsen memoir of wilderness life, and the stories aren't nearly as emotional, but it's a good book. I'd give it at least two and a half stars, and strongly consider the full three. Gary Paulsen created something unforgettable in his Brian's Saga books, and I have loved them. They changed me for the better, and that can't be said of most literature. We've never seen a writing talent quite like Gary Paulsen, and we are oh so lucky to have him.

[Mel Raschke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paulsen reveals what books inspired him to write the Brian books

[Brayden Hendrickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is about Gary Paulsen in his younger years, He talks about all of the hunting he did when he was younger. Since he parents were poor they couldn't afford much food so Gary went out by himself armed with a bow to come back with dinner. He had to provide for himself completely with working multiple jobs to afford school clothes. Then as he got older and got out of hunting he went to also to race dogs and sleigh. Hes won multiple races but the main thing he remembered from also is all the mosses. He said hes been attacked by multiple mosses. He then got into writhing books about his experiences which is where this book came from.

[Kei · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book in one word was fascinating. Understanding the backstory behind the hatchet was great. It added more depth to The Hatchet. His adventures through the woods and the winter inspired the realization that Gary Paulsen's fate was to survive. To survive to write the series that impacted children and adults all over the world. His main message to us was that your survival depends on your luck, chance, and most importantly your guts. I strongly recommend people who have read the hatchet series and people who are searching for adventure to read this book. "I remembered him and his eyes and I put him in the plane next to Brian because he was, above all things, real, and I wanted the book to be real."