Nathan’s Run is the book that launched my writing career. It’s hard to believe that seventeen years have passed since I first sat down and started imagining the story. Perhaps because this was my first published novel, and as such occupies a very special place in my life, I actually remember where I was and what was going on around me when I wrote certain passages. (The scene in the Hillbilly Tavern, where Lyle Pointer has his persuasive discussion with Mark Bailey, for example, was written from a hotel room in Overland Park, Kansas, where I sat stranded by a snowstorm.) Funny how stuff like that sticks with you.
One thing I remember most vividly was an overarching fear throughout the writing process that because my protagonist is a twelve-year-old child, the book would be classified as young adult fiction. Remember, this was 1994, well before the Harry Potter books and the YA juggernaut that they launched. YA was a literary ghetto back then, and it wasn’t a neighborhood where I wanted my book to live. As a hedge against its being cubbyholed as YA fiction, I made the language in the book pretty harsh.
It was a mistake. When Nathan’s Run won an Alex Award from the American Library Association, classifying it as one of the best adult-market books for young adult readers, I learned the enormity of the mistake. That award triggered a flood of purchases for school libraries, and as adolescents brought the book home to their parents, the backlash began. At one point, Nathan’s Run was among the 100 most-banned books in America.
Okay, among some circles, having a book banned is a mantle of honor—and I get that. If you read my website and my blog, you’ll understand my feelings about book banners. Pushing all those lofty thoughts and theories aside, there’s no denying that the language in the book squandered an opportunity for Nathan and his trials to reach far more readers than he did.
Well, this edition makes it right. I won’t pledge that the language is all G-rated now (it’s not), but I’ve brought it down to a solid PG (maybe PG-13). The one remaining occurrence of the F-bomb had to stay, and when you read the passage, I think you’ll see why.
SPOILER WARNING: If you’re reading this afterword before you’ve finished the book, I’m about to reveal a biggie. Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.
If you paid close attention, you’ll note that Pointer carries a revolver that’s fitted with a silencer. I’ve received a lot of mail over the years—a lot of mail—from people who wanted to set me straight on the fact that you can’t effectively suppress a revolver because of the gap that exists between the cylinder and the barrel. For the record, I know that. I knew it when I originally wrote that scene seventeen years ago, just as I knew that you can’t really suppress any high-powered bullet because of the sonic boom the round itself produces as it travels through the air.
I considered appeasing those critics during this rewrite, but in the end, I decided to leave it the way I originally wrote it. I love the image of the SWAT sniper seeing the cylinder of the revolver beginning to turn as it was pressed to Nathan’s head. That is, in fact, the first fully formed scene that I imagined when Nathan’s Run was first coming together as a story. I can’t think of an image as visceral involving a semiautomatic handgun—certainly nothing that could be seen through a sniper’s scope.
I’ve also received a lot of email from people who crave just one more chapter to let them know what happens next in Nathan’s life. If you’re one of those people, I have news:
In my original draft of Nathan’s Run, the final scene of the story was different than the one that is here in the book. I changed it to make it stronger, but in doing so, I eliminated the final coda to the story that answers the question of what happens to the characters in the immediate aftermath of the story. So here’s my offer to the curious among you: When you finish this new edition of Nathan’s Run, if you’re curious about that original last chapter, visit www.kensingtonbooks. com or my website, www.johngilstrap.com.