Canyons - Finding a skull on a camping trip in the canyons outside El Paso, Texas, Brennan becomes involved with the fate of a young Apache Indian who lived in the late 1800s.

The Foxman - A town boy sent to live on a remote wilderness farm forms a friendship with an elderly, disfigured man who teaches him many things.

Hatchet - After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce.

The Night the White Deer Died - A teenage girl and an old Indian are brought together by the same haunting dream.

Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights - Carley recalls the extraordinary summer when, as a troubled fourteen-year-old, he first came to northern Minnesota to stay with his blacksmith Uncle David and gained not only new skills but also a new sense of himself.

Tiltawhirl John - A fifteen-year-old runaway discovers that a carnival's razzle-dazzle doesn't shield it from the cruelties of life.

Tracker - Only thirteen, John must track a deer in the Minnesota woods for his family's winter meat, and in doing so finds himself drawn to the doe who leads him and hating his role as hunter.

The Voyage of the Frog - When David goes out on his sailboat to scatter his recently deceased uncle's ashes to the wind, he is caught in a fierce storm and must survive many days on his own as he works out his feelings about life and his uncle.

Winterkill - An unhappy thirteen-year-old is befriended and protected by Duda, the tough cop of a small Minnesota town.

Woodsong - For a rugged outdoor man and his family, life in northern Minnesota is a wild experience involving wolves, deer, and the sled dogs that make their way of life possible. Includes an account of the author's first Iditarod, a dogsled race across Alaska.