After a year in exile on an Alaskan island as punishment for severely beating a fellow student, Cole Matthews returns to school in Minneapolis having made peace with himself and his victim--but he finds that surviving the violence and hatred of high school is even harder than surviving in the wilderness. After a year in exile on an Alaskan island for beating a student, Cole returns to Minneapolis having made peace with himself and his victim. But he finds that surviving the violence and hatred of high school is harder than surviving in the wilderness.