Jason Thorn is a filthy and unwanted 13-year-old with a bleak future. He’s been pulled from school for good and is kept prisoner in the family basement with his dog when a wicked storm hits his tiny hometown of Niobrara. Already adept at enduring situations most teenagers would not be able to comprehend, Jason must survive the onslaught of floodwaters and devastation that has destroyed his hometown. To do so, he’ll rely on three unexpected friends who will encourage him along the way.
"Niobrara's Thorn" is intended for young adult and adult audiences.
"Niobrara's Thorn" is intended for young adult and adult audiences.
The right town for the story
When it came time to find a town perfect for the story in "Niobrara's Thorn," it required a little geographical research and the ability to ascertain whether it could, in fact, host a clash of catastrophe in the merging of tornadoes and floods. Luckily, the storm created in the book is the work of fiction and the fine folks of Niobrara didn't actually go through it. - Patrick
This story is for Christian Choate
My journey into Niobrara and a flood that may or may not have happened began on an unseasonably hot, late-spring day in Helena, Montana, in June of 2012. It was supposed to be a break from the everyday insanity that comes with being a freelance writer, slash, stay-at-home dad. Don’t get me wrong, I love my children more than anything, but beginning a new novel while playing cars with my three-year-old as SpongeBob laughs unmercifully in the background is about as non-productive an environment as you could ask for in terms of penning a novel.
It was supposed to be a three-day hiatus from not only the kids, but my dogs, my home, my neighborhood, anything that I would otherwise consider regular features in my everyday existence. My wife Jessica, a fifth-grade teacher, was scheduled to be in Helena the week after her school went into summer seclusion and I figured I could begin my new project in the hotel room while she was attending her meetings. I have to admit, it was difficult to find my creative spark that first morning. It always is when you’re staring at a new book and it is but a blinking curser on the screen. Anyone who has ever started writing a substantial project knows that feeling. The story was written in my mind, an ode to a newspaper article that I just couldn’t shake. I knew who my character was and what he was going to face. I even knew how his adventure would end. I just needed a location. And a title. And about 50,000 words on the topic.
Google Maps is an incredible piece of technology that helps people in so many different ways. If anything, it’s cool to find your house and see where your cars were parked the day pictures were taken of your home from space. Is my lawn really that spotty? I knew my character needed to live in a place located at the confluence of two rivers. Odd that I live just a few miles from one of the most important confluences in Montana yet it was far from what I was seeking. It needed to be in or around “tornado alley,” very small and somewhat secluded. Following the same Missouri River that flows through my hometown, I ended up in Nebraska. I knew in an instant that I had found the perfect location for my story in Niobrara. Surrounded on two sides by rivers and protected by miles of farmland to the east and south, it was the perfect spot to begin my tale.
I struggled to name the book. That’s always my favorite part of writing; when a title jumps out and becomes the identity of a new novel. Once it’s in place, it becomes as familiar to me as the first names of my children. Could I picture my son Marky suddenly being called Frank or my little Jack asking us to call him Trevor? That’s preposterous! Just like with my children and their names, a book’s title always seems an act of destiny when it becomes reality. It was “Thunder Dogs,” and then “Storm Dogs.” As I wrote a paragraph here or one there, I kept going back to the title with disdain. They weren’t going to work. Somewhere on my computer there are two very small files of book names that never happened. If I were to open “ThunderDogs.doc” today and pick up where I left off, it just wouldn’t be the same story. Would I spend the entire three days in that hotel room just researching a town I’d never really been to, struggling to come up with a simple title? More than anything, I wanted to tell my wife details about the story I was working on. About the little boy that inspired me so.
That’s when I started thinking about my lead character – Jason Thorn. I knew his name. It was scribbled all over my notes and I had pictured him for quite some time. His clothes. His personality. His plight. I knew that no matter how passionately I rooted for him and no matter which direction the story took, it wasn’t going to help his future. Honestly, he was very familiar to me. I had read about him countless times on the Internet. Well, not Jason per se but the child who inspired me to conjure him months earlier. His name was Christian Choate. I never knew Christian. Few did.
Christian Choate was a 13-year-old boy who, in 2009, was beaten and murdered by his father in Gary, Indiana. It’s a sad reality that this type of story isn’t all that uncommon in the blotter of online headlines and articles we see each and every day. What made Christian’s story so heartbreaking and incomprehensible wasn’t so much the manner in which he died, it was the manner in which he lived and the manner in which he was missed (more specifically wasn’t missed) when he was no longer.
The story is terrible. By all accounts, Christian was loathed by his father and stepmother (there’s no reason to list their names here as anonymity seems like a fitting tribute). Up to a year before his death, Christian was confined to a dog kennel where he was fed sparingly and forced to wear a diaper. He had siblings in the small trailer they called home but they were unable and unwilling to help him through fear of a similar fate as well as a sometimes demented urge to participate. Atrocities inflicted on the boy included being tied to a bed frame while being beaten by his father with a metal pole. Baths were said to be ice cold to reduce the swelling and hide the bruises. An older sister who ultimately blew the whistle on the whole thing testified that she often told Christian how much she hated him, choking him to near unconsciousness on more than one occasion. Her hatred, she said, was due to her parents brainwashing her into viewing him as an animal. These weren’t the crimes we know from stories of the Holocaust or soldiers at a POW camp but rather the daily life of a small boy living in Middle America.
Christian was forced by his mother to keep a “journal” in his final days in the cage. I became fascinated with the thought of that journal. What would a boy in such a position write about? Reports say that wrote about his hunger, had curious questions about his existence and wondered why his family hated him so and when someone would eventually come to save him. In a final act of arrogance, his parents kept the journal and the words that would help ultimately incarcerate them.
As the story goes, Christian’s final day was wrought with confusion. He was dizzy, confused and couldn’t keep his meager offering of food down and his father beat him one last time. Christian died from his mistreatment but his soul would have to wait before the extent of his hellish life was revealed. The other siblings were told to stay quiet and Christian was buried in a garbage bag in the backyard, encased in cement and just as quickly forgotten. In 2011, two years after he was buried, his sister revealed the events that took place at the Choate house and the world was made aware of this horrible story.
Jason was my interpretation of who Christian might have been. He was a child who never got a chance and for whatever reason, was put in a situation where he almost became a lost soul, put on this planet for 13 invisible but very agonizing years. The most challenging part of writing the tale was knowing that with each page, Jason would ultimately be condemned to the same treatment as Christian. I was responsible for Jason’s future and it was sad to lead him down such a terrible path to an equally terrible fate. I also knew that I couldn’t tell the reader about Christian until the end of the story. I felt it would be more powerful if the similarities and tribute were revealed at the end.
When I read about Christian for the first time, I thought about something a lot of us might take for granted yet we think about more often than we might be willing to admit. We all, in one way, shape or form, want to be loved. We want to exist on this planet. We want to leave a legacy whether it be through the children we raise or the jobs we have or just the difference we make to others. Friends, loved ones, acquaintances, even complete strangers who we might help along the way; we all ultimately want to feel like we existed in this overpopulated and crazy world for a reason. It’s almost impossible to imagine an existence where our world consists of the walls to a small cage while the only people we know are also the ones who inflict the most harm. Worst of all knowing that beyond that life, no one cares.
For Christian Choate, existence was an afterthought. Here’s a boy who was pulled from school, kept in a kennel and abused until he died and was discarded in the backyard not to be discovered for two years. That’s what stood out to me the most. No child should have to live a life anonymous. Christian was here and he was given the worst hand a person could imagine.
And here I sat in the comfortable chair of an even more comfortable hotel room, struggling to come up with a title for a book based on one of the most uncomfortable of subjects. The problem wasn’t the title, it was my obsession with justice that was clouding my concentration. I wanted to write the book and honor Christian in the only way I knew how – through the eyes and experiences of Jason Thorn. The boys are connected in their misery but it is my hope that they can also be connected in their existence.
As a writer, I also must find a peaceful audible environment from which to work. I’ve found over the years that nothing soothes and inspires me like movie soundtracks. Each book that has flowed from my brain has also been accompanied by its own individual soundtrack, most of which are kept secret in my mind and listened to dozens of times over depending on how long it took to write the story. With “Niobrara’s Thorn,” I found that the beautiful score composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis for “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” helped give this story emotion and heart and no track exemplified this power like “A Song for Bob.” Even today, I find myself welling with tears as I hear the haunting cello on that track. For me, it’s just as much “A Song for Christian and Jason.”
We cannot help Christian other than by honoring his memory and making sure that we do whatever we can to prevent something like this from ever happening again. His anonymity was, in many ways, just as disturbing as his treatment. His writings were very much to the point. Why didn’t anyone come looking for him? Was he not a member of society like the rest of us? It is with this notion that we must ask ourselves to never let someone walk the halls of our schools alone or accept that someone should not be given the valuable gift of friendship because they might appear different or strange. If someone looks to be experiencing an unfathomable time at home, please encourage them to get help.
Child abuse is something that happens at home most of the time. Chances are, you’ve sat next to someone in school who may have endured terrible things the night before but they’re either too embarrassed or too private to talk about it, even to a close friend. Drunken and misguided attacks from loved ones are a sad but real occurrence that sometimes has no real solution. It’s cliché to point out but the ones who suffer such conditions the most are almost always the children and school is often the only place they have for escape. When that’s taken away, as was the case with Christian, society must step in and take care of our future.
It was ironic that I began writing a novel inspired by a boy who experienced such hatred from those he depended on the most as I sat 80 miles from my own children, holed up in a Helena hotel room that was supposed to shield me from the chaos of parenthood. I spent the first two days researching and outlining what was going to be the novel. I even managed to turn that blinking cursor on a blank “page 1” into quite a few pages of copy. I found my title in “Niobrara’s Thorn” and knew immediately that it was the right one. Instead of spending that third day writing and polishing the beginnings of the book, I hopped in the car and drove I-15 north to Great Falls where I picked up both of my sons and a bag with a change of clothes. I traveled south back to Helena and pulled up to the hotel, both boys strapped safely in the back seat. Instead of writing on that final day, we spent it swimming in the pool and had a nice dinner at a restaurant as a family that evening.
“Niobrara’s Thorn” is just as much a dedication to Christian as it is a vow to my children that, even if my wife and I seem harsh at times, we will always put them ahead of ourselves and make sure they never experience danger at our hands or know the hollow feeling that comes with yearning for the love of a parent.
For Christian Choate, 1996-2009.
It was supposed to be a three-day hiatus from not only the kids, but my dogs, my home, my neighborhood, anything that I would otherwise consider regular features in my everyday existence. My wife Jessica, a fifth-grade teacher, was scheduled to be in Helena the week after her school went into summer seclusion and I figured I could begin my new project in the hotel room while she was attending her meetings. I have to admit, it was difficult to find my creative spark that first morning. It always is when you’re staring at a new book and it is but a blinking curser on the screen. Anyone who has ever started writing a substantial project knows that feeling. The story was written in my mind, an ode to a newspaper article that I just couldn’t shake. I knew who my character was and what he was going to face. I even knew how his adventure would end. I just needed a location. And a title. And about 50,000 words on the topic.
Google Maps is an incredible piece of technology that helps people in so many different ways. If anything, it’s cool to find your house and see where your cars were parked the day pictures were taken of your home from space. Is my lawn really that spotty? I knew my character needed to live in a place located at the confluence of two rivers. Odd that I live just a few miles from one of the most important confluences in Montana yet it was far from what I was seeking. It needed to be in or around “tornado alley,” very small and somewhat secluded. Following the same Missouri River that flows through my hometown, I ended up in Nebraska. I knew in an instant that I had found the perfect location for my story in Niobrara. Surrounded on two sides by rivers and protected by miles of farmland to the east and south, it was the perfect spot to begin my tale.
I struggled to name the book. That’s always my favorite part of writing; when a title jumps out and becomes the identity of a new novel. Once it’s in place, it becomes as familiar to me as the first names of my children. Could I picture my son Marky suddenly being called Frank or my little Jack asking us to call him Trevor? That’s preposterous! Just like with my children and their names, a book’s title always seems an act of destiny when it becomes reality. It was “Thunder Dogs,” and then “Storm Dogs.” As I wrote a paragraph here or one there, I kept going back to the title with disdain. They weren’t going to work. Somewhere on my computer there are two very small files of book names that never happened. If I were to open “ThunderDogs.doc” today and pick up where I left off, it just wouldn’t be the same story. Would I spend the entire three days in that hotel room just researching a town I’d never really been to, struggling to come up with a simple title? More than anything, I wanted to tell my wife details about the story I was working on. About the little boy that inspired me so.
That’s when I started thinking about my lead character – Jason Thorn. I knew his name. It was scribbled all over my notes and I had pictured him for quite some time. His clothes. His personality. His plight. I knew that no matter how passionately I rooted for him and no matter which direction the story took, it wasn’t going to help his future. Honestly, he was very familiar to me. I had read about him countless times on the Internet. Well, not Jason per se but the child who inspired me to conjure him months earlier. His name was Christian Choate. I never knew Christian. Few did.
Christian Choate was a 13-year-old boy who, in 2009, was beaten and murdered by his father in Gary, Indiana. It’s a sad reality that this type of story isn’t all that uncommon in the blotter of online headlines and articles we see each and every day. What made Christian’s story so heartbreaking and incomprehensible wasn’t so much the manner in which he died, it was the manner in which he lived and the manner in which he was missed (more specifically wasn’t missed) when he was no longer.
The story is terrible. By all accounts, Christian was loathed by his father and stepmother (there’s no reason to list their names here as anonymity seems like a fitting tribute). Up to a year before his death, Christian was confined to a dog kennel where he was fed sparingly and forced to wear a diaper. He had siblings in the small trailer they called home but they were unable and unwilling to help him through fear of a similar fate as well as a sometimes demented urge to participate. Atrocities inflicted on the boy included being tied to a bed frame while being beaten by his father with a metal pole. Baths were said to be ice cold to reduce the swelling and hide the bruises. An older sister who ultimately blew the whistle on the whole thing testified that she often told Christian how much she hated him, choking him to near unconsciousness on more than one occasion. Her hatred, she said, was due to her parents brainwashing her into viewing him as an animal. These weren’t the crimes we know from stories of the Holocaust or soldiers at a POW camp but rather the daily life of a small boy living in Middle America.
Christian was forced by his mother to keep a “journal” in his final days in the cage. I became fascinated with the thought of that journal. What would a boy in such a position write about? Reports say that wrote about his hunger, had curious questions about his existence and wondered why his family hated him so and when someone would eventually come to save him. In a final act of arrogance, his parents kept the journal and the words that would help ultimately incarcerate them.
As the story goes, Christian’s final day was wrought with confusion. He was dizzy, confused and couldn’t keep his meager offering of food down and his father beat him one last time. Christian died from his mistreatment but his soul would have to wait before the extent of his hellish life was revealed. The other siblings were told to stay quiet and Christian was buried in a garbage bag in the backyard, encased in cement and just as quickly forgotten. In 2011, two years after he was buried, his sister revealed the events that took place at the Choate house and the world was made aware of this horrible story.
Jason was my interpretation of who Christian might have been. He was a child who never got a chance and for whatever reason, was put in a situation where he almost became a lost soul, put on this planet for 13 invisible but very agonizing years. The most challenging part of writing the tale was knowing that with each page, Jason would ultimately be condemned to the same treatment as Christian. I was responsible for Jason’s future and it was sad to lead him down such a terrible path to an equally terrible fate. I also knew that I couldn’t tell the reader about Christian until the end of the story. I felt it would be more powerful if the similarities and tribute were revealed at the end.
When I read about Christian for the first time, I thought about something a lot of us might take for granted yet we think about more often than we might be willing to admit. We all, in one way, shape or form, want to be loved. We want to exist on this planet. We want to leave a legacy whether it be through the children we raise or the jobs we have or just the difference we make to others. Friends, loved ones, acquaintances, even complete strangers who we might help along the way; we all ultimately want to feel like we existed in this overpopulated and crazy world for a reason. It’s almost impossible to imagine an existence where our world consists of the walls to a small cage while the only people we know are also the ones who inflict the most harm. Worst of all knowing that beyond that life, no one cares.
For Christian Choate, existence was an afterthought. Here’s a boy who was pulled from school, kept in a kennel and abused until he died and was discarded in the backyard not to be discovered for two years. That’s what stood out to me the most. No child should have to live a life anonymous. Christian was here and he was given the worst hand a person could imagine.
And here I sat in the comfortable chair of an even more comfortable hotel room, struggling to come up with a title for a book based on one of the most uncomfortable of subjects. The problem wasn’t the title, it was my obsession with justice that was clouding my concentration. I wanted to write the book and honor Christian in the only way I knew how – through the eyes and experiences of Jason Thorn. The boys are connected in their misery but it is my hope that they can also be connected in their existence.
As a writer, I also must find a peaceful audible environment from which to work. I’ve found over the years that nothing soothes and inspires me like movie soundtracks. Each book that has flowed from my brain has also been accompanied by its own individual soundtrack, most of which are kept secret in my mind and listened to dozens of times over depending on how long it took to write the story. With “Niobrara’s Thorn,” I found that the beautiful score composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis for “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” helped give this story emotion and heart and no track exemplified this power like “A Song for Bob.” Even today, I find myself welling with tears as I hear the haunting cello on that track. For me, it’s just as much “A Song for Christian and Jason.”
We cannot help Christian other than by honoring his memory and making sure that we do whatever we can to prevent something like this from ever happening again. His anonymity was, in many ways, just as disturbing as his treatment. His writings were very much to the point. Why didn’t anyone come looking for him? Was he not a member of society like the rest of us? It is with this notion that we must ask ourselves to never let someone walk the halls of our schools alone or accept that someone should not be given the valuable gift of friendship because they might appear different or strange. If someone looks to be experiencing an unfathomable time at home, please encourage them to get help.
Child abuse is something that happens at home most of the time. Chances are, you’ve sat next to someone in school who may have endured terrible things the night before but they’re either too embarrassed or too private to talk about it, even to a close friend. Drunken and misguided attacks from loved ones are a sad but real occurrence that sometimes has no real solution. It’s cliché to point out but the ones who suffer such conditions the most are almost always the children and school is often the only place they have for escape. When that’s taken away, as was the case with Christian, society must step in and take care of our future.
It was ironic that I began writing a novel inspired by a boy who experienced such hatred from those he depended on the most as I sat 80 miles from my own children, holed up in a Helena hotel room that was supposed to shield me from the chaos of parenthood. I spent the first two days researching and outlining what was going to be the novel. I even managed to turn that blinking cursor on a blank “page 1” into quite a few pages of copy. I found my title in “Niobrara’s Thorn” and knew immediately that it was the right one. Instead of spending that third day writing and polishing the beginnings of the book, I hopped in the car and drove I-15 north to Great Falls where I picked up both of my sons and a bag with a change of clothes. I traveled south back to Helena and pulled up to the hotel, both boys strapped safely in the back seat. Instead of writing on that final day, we spent it swimming in the pool and had a nice dinner at a restaurant as a family that evening.
“Niobrara’s Thorn” is just as much a dedication to Christian as it is a vow to my children that, even if my wife and I seem harsh at times, we will always put them ahead of ourselves and make sure they never experience danger at our hands or know the hollow feeling that comes with yearning for the love of a parent.
For Christian Choate, 1996-2009.
