Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is flying to visit his father in northern Canada after his parents’ divorce. When the pilot dies during the flight, Brian crash-lands the plane in a lake. Alone in the wilderness with the hatchet his mother gave him, he has to learn how to find food, make fire, and shelter himself. He also has to live with a painful secret about his family. Brian spends 54 days in the woods before he is rescued.

Our book review and discussion of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. In 1845, Thoreau walked into the woods near Walden Pond, built a small cabin with his own hands, and lived there for two years, two months, and two days — and the book he wrote about it has been inspiring and irritating readers ever since.On this episode of The Winklings Book Club, Chris Knight and Micheal Lylez dig into Walden, or Life in the Woods: what Thoreau was really after, whether his experiment in simple living holds up, and what a book about slowing down has to say to a world that won't.