his mother began an affair with the corpsman. In elementary school, he was quite deficient at literacy class and struggled with it. The accounts in Eastern Sun ended when Gary and his mother left Manila. Bits and pieces of Gary's adolescence can be cobbled together in Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books. In that book, Paulsen discusses how he survived between the ages of twelve and fourteen back in Minnesota. He barely mentions his parents except to say that they were too busy being drunk to stock the refrigerator. He worked several jobs during this time, including setting pins at a bowling alley, delivering newspapers, and working as a farmhand. He bought his own school supplies and a .22 single-shot rifle, which he used to hunt for sustenance. Eventually, he gave up the rifle and manufactured his own bow and arrows, which he used to hunt deer. Paulsen graduated from Lincoln High School in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. He attended Bemidji State University, but dropped out. He claimed to have joined the Army at age 17, which age he reached in 1956; his service seems to have begun when he was 19 or 20, in 1959. He served in the United States Army between 1959 and 1962, attaining the rank of sergeant while working with missiles. His Army service brought him to New Mexico for a while, a place in which he later chose to settle. Careers Much of what is known about Paulsen's life was revealed in the prologues and epilogues of his own books. In The Quilt, one of a series of three novels based on summers spent with his grandmother, Paulsen recounts what a tremendous influence his grandmother had on him. It is difficult to say how factual an autobiography The Quilt is intended to be, as Paulsen is supposed to have been six years old in this story and yet he made references to events found in Eastern Sun, which is supposed to have been set later. He also refers to himself, in this book, in the third person and only as "the boy". Much of Paulsen's work features the outdoors and highlights the importance of nature. He often uses "coming of age" themes in his novels, where a character masters the art of survival in isolation as a rite of passage to manhood and maturity. He was critical of technology and