Gone to the Woods

First seen at age 5, young Gary experiences many horrors, including a train packed with grotesquely wounded soldiers, a plane crash at sea whose survivors are attacked and killed by sharks before their rescuers can reach them, and his drunken mother trying to kill him with a knife. In the Philippines, he sees a bloodstained wall where, during the war, women and children were killed with flamethrowers, and watches as locals who try to get over the barbed wire fence of a military base to steal food are machine-gunned to death. He suffers routine beatings by local bullies until he causes them enough pain to make them stop --taking a lesson from his uncle, who helped him deal with an attacking flock of geese. He admires a beautiful deer in the woods and is angry when he finds her dead from a careless shot by a drunken hunter. An avid hunter and fisherman himself, he does a lot of violence to animals, including much ripping out of guts and eating the eyes of fish. His drunken parents have violent physical fights and either neglect or abuse him, which doesn't keep him from getting sent back to them when he runs away and tries to make a life for himself. One of the jobs he takes to survive is setting pins in a bowling alley whose drunk patrons make a sport of trying to hit the pin setters and are often successful. In the Army, he describes learning to kill people efficiently in large numbers. As a 5-year-old, he's attacked by a flock of geese. When his mother and the latest of his "uncles" come to take him away from the farm where he's safe and happy, his (real) Uncle Sig starts to defend him by force but is held back by his wife.

There's no explicit sex, but sleaze is nearly constant with Gary's parents and some other adults. Five-year-old Gary is used as a pawn to attract men by his drunken mother and hides out under the kitchen table when she carries on with them. His early childhood involves a steady parade of "uncles" who aren't related to him. Apparently his absent, deployed father is doing much the same, because when his parents are reunited all they do is get drunk and scream at each other about infidelity. Later, Gary joins a carnival, where the conflict between the owner and his straying, much-gawked-at wife leads to violence and the end of the job. In the Army, he's informed that getting crabs or venereal disease will get him charged with "destruction of government property."

Crude anatomical details of Army physical. Frequent "piss." Occasional "bastards," "bugger," "crap," "balls," "sucks." "Poop" (chicken, pig, and otherwise) is a regular feature of farm life, as is getting yourself covered with it.

Alcohol is everywhere, and drunks are a constant: the parents who drink themselves into a stupor after screaming at each other and attacking their kid, the drunks at the bar from whom he steals loose change, the drunks at the bowling alleys who try to hit the kids setting the pins, often injuring them badly. Five-year-old Gary helps a train porter who's bringing "good juice" to wounded soldiers. An old man chews tobacco and spits a lot; adults smoke cigarettes.

Parents need to know that Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood is a harsh, harrowing memoir by bestselling author and three-time Newbery Honor recipient Gary Paulsen, known for his intense survival novel Hatchet. He punctuates the vivid horrors of his early life with powerful descriptions of the things that saved him -- the beauty of nature, the brief experience of being in a loving family, a post-World War II America still wild and free enough that a 12-year-old could flee his drunken, abusive parents and make a life for himself, however fleetingly, doing farm work on the Great Plains. He describes how worlds opened up for him through reading and writing after a librarian treated an outcast kid with respect. In a series of third-person vignettes that take "the boy" from the age of 5 to his enlistment in the Army, there's physical and emotional violence aplenty, from wartime atrocities and badly wounded soldiers and plane-crash survivors attacked by sharks to young Gary's parents trying to kill him. Crude language (including "piss," "bastards," "bugger," "crap," "balls") and situations, from bathroom crises to Army physicals, are common. Much of the story involves hunting, fishing, and wilderness survival, with matter-of-fact but gory detail. Ultimately, it's an inspirational tale of determination, self-respect, and transformational kindness, but the narrative road goes through horrific, and real, territory. The publisher recommends Gone to the Woods for kids age 8 to 12. But given the amount of child abuse, alcoholism, his parents' violent physical fights, and the implication that his mother used Gary to attract men in bars for sex, we think this is better suited for teens 13 and up.