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xv, [3], 106, [2] p. Map. Author's NOte. Selected Sources. Gary Paulsen was

xv, [3], 106, [2] p. Map. Author's NOte. Selected Sources. Gary Paulsen was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his extended family resided, to Oscar and Eunice H. (née Moen), [1] Paulsen has two siblings: a full sister, Paulette, and a half brother Bill who was born to his father from a previous marriage. His father was a career Army officer, on Patton's staff, who spent most of World War II overseas. Gary did not meet his father until he was 9 years old. He spent time throughout his childhood with his grandmother, aunts and various other relatives. [2] When he was seven he and his mother joined his father in the Philippines where he lived for two years. He then returned to Minnesota. At the age of 14, Gary ran away and joined a carnival. [3] Paulsen has written some fragmented autobiographical works, such as Eastern Sun, Winter Moon: An Autobiographical Odyssey. The book, which is written in first person, begins when Paulsen was seven, living in Chicago with his mother. Paulsen described several traumatic occurrences that transpired during the three years that are chronicled by the book. For example, one day while his mother was napping, Gary sneaked outside to play. There a vagrant snatched him and apparently attempted to molest him, but his mother suddenly appeared on the scene and beat the man to death. Paulsen reported his mother's many adulterous affairs in Eastern Sun, suggesting that the man he called "father" was not really his biologic father. He also discussed his mother's alcoholism. He told how she would bring him to a bar and had him sing for his supper, even though she had an income from her work in a munitions factory, and he felt there was no need for this. When World War II ended, Gary's father sent for him and his mother to come join him in the Philippines, where he was stationed. A great part of the book is dedicated to the voyage by naval vessel to the Philippines. During the trip, Gary witnessed a plane crash. He, his mother, and the people who were also being transported on this ship, looked on as many of the airplane s passengers were killed or maimed by the sharks who would follow the ship consuming waste. His mother, the only woman aboard, helped the corpsman care for the surviving victims. After arriving in Hawaii, according to Paulsen, her mother began an affair with the ship's corpsman. [2] Aboard the ship full of sailors and soldiers, who all wanted to get close to his mother, Gary learned to shoot. And the soldiers beat the sailor, who may or may not have planned to harm him. Gary and his mother arrived in Manila where he met his father for the first time. He quickly realized that he would not have a close relationship with the man whom he felt he did not resemble nor relate to, who never referred to him as anything except "the boy" and who, like Gary's mother, was an alcoholic. Gary's family had two servants while they lived on the Army base in Manila, a man named Rom, and a woman named Maria. Gary shared a room with Maria and before long, the woman, who had endured multiple rapes at the hands of the formally occupying Japanese, began to molest Gary. He claimed in the book that this happened quite often, nearly every night, until he left Manila. While living in Manila, Gary's parents continued to drink heavily. His mother also continued to have affairs. Gary walked in on his mother frequently to find her in sexual encounters with men other than the man he referred to as "father". Also, while Gary was in the Philippines he had a close brush with death when he nearly went over a dam while wading. [2] The accounts in Eastern Sun ended when Gary and his mother left Manila in 1975. Bits and pieces of Gary's adolescence can be pieced together in Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books. In that book, Paulsen discussed the ways in which he survived between the ages of twelve and fourteen back in Minnesota. He barely mentioned his parents except to say...