3 NBs of Julian Drew
by James M Deem

3 NBs of Julian Drew is a novel about the strange and sometimes magical life of 15-year-old Julian Drew.

For ages 12 and up.

When I was in high school, I secretly began to write what was to become some twenty-seven years later a novel eventually entitled 3 NBs of Julian Drew. The first draft of that novel, which was an untitled stream of consciousness narrative, is nothing like the one that was published, but it was the beginning of a story that I knew I had to tell.

Divided into three notebooks (or NBs in the special abbreviated and coded language of the narrator), the book tells the strange and sometimes magical story of an emotionally (and sometimes physically) abused teenager named Julian Drew who addresses his NBs to a person he calls U, a person he has not seen for four years. The reader senses that Julian is in great pain because of U, and his memories of U spur him to begin writing a journal. He buys a notebook (abbreviated as NB, it is the first NB of three that he fills for this book) on October 25 at an Osco Drug in Tempe, Arizona. It is a spiral green Econoline with 80 pages, 34 lines per page.

For four days he tries to write in his NB or notebook, but his pen will not cooperate until it lets him write in a secret code to someone he calls U:

My hand is going 2 write U if it K1775 me," his pen writes. "My brain had a nowhere dream 4 20 nights. My eyes saw a book on a shelf. My fingers found a letter inside. The letter was from U.

Word by mysterious word, his NBs become a refuge from his bewildering circumstances and a record of a special dream about U and the journey he undertakes to solve the puzzle of his life. As he writes, he invents a code to keep some of his innermost (and most disturbing) thoughts safe from the prying eyes of two people that he labels 43 and 543.

~~~

I don’t like to describe events in my books that are better left to readers to discover on their own, so I cannot say much more about 3 NBs. Still, I have been asked many times if the novel is autobiographical, because it sounds real. My answer is always a carefully qualified “yes." The book was based on some of my childhood experiences, but I did not live the life of Julian Drew.

For example, at one point Julian writes “The Story of His Life” for an assignment in his English class. The facts that he relates include these: he was born in Wheeling, West Virginia; his mother died a few days after fifth grade ended; three months later his father remarried a woman who had two children; his father and stepmother began to treat Julian badly in West Virginia. After the family moved to Arizona, he was treated badly there as well.

Although our lives shared certain events, Julian and I were also very different. I would never have run away from home (though it occasionally crossed my mind as a fantasy). I was very involved in my school. I was senior class vice president and co-editor of the yearbook. In writing the book, I allowed my imagination to wander freely. I created U (a different U than my own U), the NBs, and many other parts of the story about Julian. My own teenage years were painful but not as painful as the life I devised for Julian. By reinventing the facts of my life for a character, I was able to tell a more poignant story.

So why did I write the book? I wanted the reader to understand the pain that a child or teenager feels in losing a parent or other loved one. Some readers have said that the book is more like poetry than a novel. Well, Julian does have a way with language. Despite his troubles, he manages to express himself in ways that seem to break down the walls of a traditional novel. His pain is tangible. If, as a reader, you could feel that pain, I succeeded in my goal.

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