StoryFix Media recently released A Mark of Strength, the second book in Christopher Webster’s Enrollment Trilogy, a thrilling adventure series that follows the story of fifteen year-old Marcus Riley who finds himself trapped in a wilderness compound where teens are left to navigate their a violent culture of their own making.
Manipulated at every turn, the story is a coming-of-age parable for being a modern teen and learning to cope in a world controlled by others while finding out what you’re made of.
The following books about wilderness survival were some of Webster’s favorite books, and informed his writing of his own thrilling and thought-provoking series.
Nip The Buds, Shoot The Kids
From Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids recounts the exploits of fifteen teenage reformatory boys evacuated to a remote mountain village in wartime.
When plague breaks out, their host abandon them and flee. However, the boys’ brief, doomed attempt to build autonomous lives of self-respect, love and tribal valour inevitably fail in the reflux of death and the adult nightmare of war.
Lord of the Flies
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys.
At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization they can do anything they want. Anything.
But as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far removed from reality as the hope of being rescued.
Battle Royale
Koushun Takami’s notorious high-octane thriller envisions a nightmare scenario: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill until only one survivor is left standing.
Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan—where it became a runaway best seller—Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world.
The Long Walk
Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, tells the tale of the contestants of a grueling walking competition where there can only be one winner—the one that survives.
In the near future, when America has become a police state, one hundred boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life.
Among them is sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty, and he knows the rules—keep a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you’re out—permanently.
Hatchet
This award-winning contemporary classic is the survival story with which all others are compared—and a page-turning, heart-stopping adventure, recipient of the Newbery Honor. Hatchet has also been nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.
Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, haunted by his secret knowledge of his mother’s infidelity, is traveling by single-engine plane to visit his father for the first time since the divorce. When the plane crashes, killing the pilot, the sole survivor is Brian. He is alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother had given him as a present.
At first consumed by despair and self-pity, Brian slowly learns survival skills—how to make a shelter for himself, how to hunt and fish and forage for food, how to make a fire—and even finds the courage to start over from scratch when a tornado ravages his campsite. When Brian is finally rescued after fifty-four days in the wild, he emerges from his ordeal with new patience and maturity, and a greater understanding of himself and his parents.
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