Across northern Canada stretch the Barrens, a region of swamps in summer and windswept, ice-encrusted plains in winter. Into this forbidding country, young Jamie Macnair and his Cree friend Awasin [the protagonists of "Lost in the Barrens"] accompany a hunting party of desperate Chipeweyans—the tribe of the Deer Eaters. The boys are separated from the rest of the group, and, with winter coming, are forced to hole up. How they face up to their predicament and learn—the hard way—to go along with nature rather than to fight it is the main theme. Illuminating it are the struggle for life's necessities; encounters with caribou, wolverine, grizzly bear and supposedly hostile Eskimos; and the discovery of Viking cairns.

Survival in the wilds has been a favorite theme since [Daniel Defoe's] "Robinson Crusoe." Here Farley Mowat develops it skillfully…. [He] seems to know all there is to know...