★★★★☆ Deus in machina

Brian's Winter

Gary Paulsen

Hatchet ends as follows. Brian, having survived almost two months after crashing in a lake in the Canadian forest, is hit by a tornado. He suffers little harm, but the tail of the airplane, which until now has been completely underwater, is exposed. This allows Brian to enter the still mostly submerged airplane and pull out the survival kit. Although Brian didn't know this when he went after it, the survival kit contains an emergency transmitter. Brian switches it on. Mere hours later a float plane shows up, lands on Brian's lake, and rescues him.

Reading that now, I can't help think to myself, "Deus ex machina". But, to be honest, it didn't bother me even slightly when I read Hatchet. If we were going to get Brian out of his fix, this seemed an entirely reasonable way to do it. Of course the survival kit would contain an emergency transmitter, probably it would be designed to survive a crash and submersion. (A fragile emergency transmitter is not much use, is it?) And of course Brian would flick the switch. As deos ex machinis go, this one seemed pretty reasonable. In the epilog of Hatchet, Gary Paulsen writes

it might be interesting to note that had Brian not been rescued when he was, had he been forced to go into hard fall, perhaps winter, it would have been very rough on him.

That is the premise of Brian's Winter. Thus, Brian's Winter is a retcon. We put the god back in the machine -- no float plane shows up on day 54 to rescue Brian. He must survive the winter on his own.

I enjoyed this a lot. In contrast to Book 2, The River, which felt entirely made up to me, Brian's Winter felt authentic. Now, I want to be clear -- I don't mean to say it felt likely that the events of Brian's Winter would occur. You will note as you read places where Brian got very lucky. Still, an author ought to be allowed at least one implausible event in a story -- the event that allowed the story to occur and makes it worth telling. But more than that, Paulsen knows what he's talking about. In his Foreword he writes

Since my life has been one of survival in winter—running two Iditarods, hunting and trapping as a boy and young man—the challenge became interesting, and so I researched and wrote Brian's Winter, showing what could and perhaps would have happened had Brian not been rescued.

I bought it. Although I, personally, have no factual basis for the belief that Paulsen gets it right, I do recognize the feel of authenticity -- of an author telling a story whose elements are intimately familiar to him. I felt it in Hatchet, and I feel it again in Brian's Winter.

In my opinion, Brian's Winter is as good a book as Hatchet.

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