YA Saves: literally.

From the Seattle Times:

As the icy Wallace River pulled William Hickman inexorably toward an ultimate 265-foot plunge, the teen quickly thought of the advice from a favorite fantasy-novel character who faced a similar predicament: "Go feet first, stay to the sides and kick off the rocks."

"I didn't know what to do," the 13-year-old recalled Monday. "I thought about anything I knew about falling down a river, and I remembered the book."

The book? One of the titles in D.J. MacHale's Pendragon series.