My mom was my teacher.

To clarify, she was my fifth-grade math teacher. She also taught art because elementary school teachers wear a lot of hats. She taught at my elementary school from the time I was in first grade up until her cancer diagnosis in 2014, and all signs pointed to her being a pretty great teacher. I can confirm she was a great mom.

One of the experiences I missed out on by not being part of her homeroom class was being read to. Sure, she sometimes read to me at home, but it wasn’t the same as it was at school. There, she was like a celebrity, and she chose the best books for her class.

One of her favorites was Gary Paulsen‘s “Hatchet.” The novel, published in 1987, is about a young boy named Brian who is lost in the Canadian Wilderness with just the clothes on his back and a hatchet that his mother gifts him before the flight.

Technically, I was familiar with the events of “Hatchet,” as my mom had given me a summary of the book, which I’ll recount for any readers who don’t want to read a 40-year-old young adult novel.

Brian Robeson is a thirteen-year-old boy who’s annoyed at his mom for divorcing his dad. He’s going to visit his dad in Canada for the summer, and before he leaves, his mom gives him a hatchet. It’s a random gift, but I guess kids like weapons, so good job, mom. Brian is traveling in a two-person bush plane when the pilot has a horrible heart attack and freaking dies while the plane is still airborne, so poor Brian has to figure out how to fly and then land a plane. He crashes into a lake and somehow survives.

For the next few weeks, Brian slowly learns how to survive and even does pretty well. He eats whatever fruit he can find. Has a few skirmishes with wild animals. Learns to fish, hunt, and even build a fire. At one point, Brian gets rocked by an angry moose because sometimes animals are dicks.

Eventually, Brian makes the brave choice to return to the plane (which is still underwater) and locate its survival kit. While creating a hole in the side of the plane, the hatchet slips and falls into the water. He rescues the hatchet from the bottom of the lake floor, resecures it to himself, and successfully gets inside the plane to find the survival kit.

Brian drags the survival kit to shore and finds it full of awesome stuff, including a radio transmitter. He accidentally turns it on and is rescued before he can even finish his first non-wilderness meal. He then spends the rest of the summer with his dad, and presumably, his parents stay divorced.

This past summer, I worked as a teacher for a writer’s summer camp, and I gave my students the choice of reading either “Percy Jackson” or “Hatchet.” I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of them were familiar with the book in some way. Some of them had already read it and even had their own copies. It seemed like kismet that I would be reading this book to my students, just as my mom once read it to hers.

It was a short summer camp, so I was only able to cover the first six chapters with my students; afterwards, I had to read the rest on my own. Dramatically reading a book aloud to a group of 10-year-olds is a much different experience than quietly reading to yourself. It reaffirmed my hunch that I would be a terrible audiobook narrator, because I kept having to stop myself from saying, “um, wait, do I just repeat this line like twenty times or…. okay I’ll just say it.”

By the time I reached the last page of the book, I mostly felt underwhelmed. I was surprised that a book with such awkward and repetitive writing was so well-loved. I do shoulder some of the blame for having unreasonable expectations, especially since, as the date of my mom’s passing drifts further and further away from me, I have a more difficult time finding tangible pieces of who she was that I can cling to. I was disappointed that something I had so strongly associated with her didn’t rock my world the way “Anne of Green Gables,” or “The Snow Walker” did.

“Hatchet” still has an impressive story. The first few chapters, where Brian realizes that the pilot is dying and has to take over for him, had me on the edge of my seat. Reading about this poor boy and his attempts to fly the plane in a straight direction without knowing how to safely land was nail-biting. There are numerous opportunities throughout this book to pause and reflect on Brian’s feelings and actions.

Aside from the main story of survival in the wilderness, Brian is also haunted by the events leading up to his parents’ divorce, which he refers to as “The Secret.” “The Secret” is that Brian accidentally caught his mother cheating on his father, knowledge his father does not share. He spends much of the book ruminating on the Secret and how it imploded his life. Had his mother not had an affair, Brian’s parents would still be together, and there would be no need for him to travel in a tiny bush plane over remote Canadian wilderness.

“Brian tried several times to tell his father, came really close once to doing it, but in the end never said a word about the man or what he knew, the Secret.”

It would be easy to cast blame on Brian’s mother for the events of the novel. Brian’s mother also bought him the eponymous hatchet, the key to his survival, which further complicates his feelings about her. Despite her obvious love for Brian, it casts her in a villainous role. She is the one who stepped out of her marriage and demanded a divorce. She is the reason Brian’s family fell apart. She is the reason Brian was traveling to visit his dad.

Like any other teacher, I try to engage my students in the material. Although, because of my interest in authors and their intentions, I like to ask my students what they think the author’s intent was. I asked why they thought Gary Paulsen chose to make divorce the central focus of the novel. My students’ ages ranged between 8 and 11, and so they made the fair assumption that Paulsen’s parents divorced when he was Brian’s age. It wasn’t until I researched Paulsen that I learned he was married three times, and two of those marriages ended in divorce.

I’m sure fans of “Hatchet” might read this and think I’m grasping at straws, but as most divorces are initiated by women, I couldn’t help but wonder if Paulsen was working out a few negative emotions about the former women in his life through Brian and his bittersweet memories of his mom. The fact that the book ends not with Brian reflecting on the person he has become, but with his inability to tell his father that his mother had an affair, was a letdown. It shifted the focus away from Brian’s incredible growth to the traumatic event that led to his parents’ separation. It made me wonder if the book was really supposed to be about Brian’s survival story, or instead an examination of how one woman’s selfishness destroyed her family and indirectly led to her son being stranded in the woods.

When I think of how my mom loved this story and recounted it to me, it was never the divorce that took center stage but Brian’s incredible story of resilience and survival. That’s what she took away from it, and what I had hoped I would feel as well. And maybe I’m speaking from a place of privilege, because to my knowledge, my mom never did anything to cause my parents’ divorce. I can’t speak to what it is like to be a child of divorce and how devastating that can be.

I was let down by the abrupt ending. Supposedly, other readers wrote to Paulsen complaining about the Deus Ex Machina at the end of the book, which inspired “Brian’s Winter.” “Brian’s Winter” is an exploration of what would have happened if Brian were not rescued at the end of “Hatchet” and instead had to survive a Canadian winter. Considering there are several books that follow “Brian’s Winter,” it’s safe to assume he somehow survives and becomes tougher for it. And while I don’t currently plan to read “Brian’s Winter” or any of the other “Hatchet” novels, I find myself wondering if Brian’s complicated relationship with his mother is ever resolved.

Author’s Note: I wrote this post before learning the more intricate details of Gary Paulsen’s life and his complicated (bad) relationship with his mother. After reading about some of the gorier details of his life with her, this knowledge adds a new layer to the character of the mother from the book that I felt was previously missing. You can read more about Paulsen’s mom and her many affairs in “Eastern Sun, Western Moon.” Although be warned that, unlike “Hatchet,” this book is very much not for children.