Northwind by Gary Paulsen

Northwind follows a boy into the northern wilderness to be reborn in the harsh cradle of nature.

Northwind by Gary Paulsen. Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2022, 256 pages

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 10-15

His mother died giving birth to him and his father died fighting a whale. The charity of strangers on the dock fed him (barely), clothed him (partially), and named him Leif, “for no other person on the docks had that name.” As soon as he was able, he was taken to sea, passed from ship to another, doing whatever task they threw at him and taking all the blows that came his way. Eventually a ship cast him off with older used-up sailors to catch and dry salmon. But before the ship could return, death came: a plague that wiped out the camp and set Leif, the one survivor, adrift in a dugout canoe with one command: “Keep going north and never come back.”

Hatchet, Gary Paulsen’s breakthrough novel, hurls a boy into the northern woods to fend for himself with a few tools. Northwind, Paulsen’s last book (published posthumously) closes the loop with another boy in another place and time, cast upon the northern waters to fend for himself with a few tools.

The first chapters are unrelievedly grim, as death stalks all of Leif’s companions and the boy himself. But he lives through it and is essentially reborn, learning new skills, seeing new sights, understanding new languages of the birds and fish and sea mammals. Orcas are traveling companions and ravens converse over his head.

The final scenes of this brief narrative glow with a cold, steely beauty. Like Brian in Hatchet, Leif becomes a new being in the wilderness. We experience the story from his point of view, a view with no perspective beyond the immediate, no religion beyond the rudiments of Norse mythology, and no sense of where he’ll go or what will become of him. Yet he is fully realized and fully human, with the capacity to make not only tools but also art.

Overall rating: 4 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 4.5

Read more about our ratings here.                 

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: Other books by Gary Paulsen we’ve reviewed are Hatchet, Gone to the Woods, and *Lawn Boy.
• Reflection: Paulsen represents a realistic, as opposed to worshipful, view of nature. See Emily’s “Parents’ Guide to Environmentalism in Children’s Literature” for a critique of another view.

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