A 1984 Newbery Honor Book

Although he faces responsibility bravely, thirteen-year-old Matt is more than a little apprehensive when his father leaves him alone to guard their new cabin in the wilderness. When a renegade white stranger steals his gun, Matt realizes he has no way to shoot game or to protect himself. When Matt meets Attean, a boy in the Beaver clan, he begins to better understand their way of life and their growing problem in adapting to the white man and the changing frontier.

Elizabeth George Speare’s Newbery Honor-winning survival story is filled with wonderful detail about living in the wilderness and the relationships that formed between settlers and natives in the 1700s. Now with an introduction by Joseph Bruchac.

Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until the Beaver clan teaches him their skills in this Newbery Honor book.>hr<* "Matt joins other memorable characters, Kit, Julie, and Karana, finding his inner strength and values in a changing world in this well-written and fast-reading story." School Library Journal, starred review