Trisha is only nine when she has to survive the forest wilderness on her own. She struggles to survive, because she isn't acclimated to a life in the forest at all. She is a nine-year-old girl; how likely is she to hunt and cook for herself? He only real options for food are to eat berries and food from the forest floor, but that can be very poisonous. So instead, she slowly starves, and the tension of the novel rises. She survives, but it is a wonder to the town who started to believe the worst.
Her incredible experience of the wilderness culminates in the moment of her rescue, but not before an encounter with a bear. The bear symbolizes the danger of the forest, made manifest. The power of nature is insurmountable, but she still does her part to survive. Her fearlessness is rewarded in the novel by survival; she is found and saved. Her courageous encounter with the bear is witnessed, and she is heralded as a survivor and hero.
The story is also about the girl in another way. Because she is nine, she is an avatar of innocence. Her descent into forest chaos symbolizes her pending experience of life. She is about to find a new kind of life more chaotic than anything her childhood contained. Her encounter with the forest can be seen as a metaphor for her pending experience of adult life and all its chaos.
