A middle grade memoir from a living literary legend, giving readers a new perspective on the origins of Gary Paulsen's famed survival stories. From the author of the bestselling Hatchet comes a true story of high-stakes wilderness survival! If not for his eight-hundred-mile journey from the busy Chicago city to a captivating Minnesotan farm aged five, there never would have been a Hatchet. Without the encouragement of the librarian who handed him his first book aged thirteen, he may never have become a reader. And without his daring teenage enlistment in the army, he might not have discovered his true calling as a storyteller. Gone to the Woods: A True Story of Growing Up in the Wild is the entrancing true story of Gary Paulsen's childhood, of grit and growing up, and is the acclaimed author at his rawest and most real.