Border Songs

Brandon Vanderkool thinks in pictures; he used to think everyone did. Six-foot-eight and dyslexic, he is not an obvious candidate for the Border Patrol, which polices the frontier between the United States and Canada, but somehow, as he ambles round the forest bird-watching, he seems to stumble upon every illegal immigrant and drug trafficker in the area. Meanwhile, his father is dealing with diseased dairy cows, his mother battles encroaching dementia, and their neighbour's daughter Madeline flirts with the cannabis underworld..."Border Songs" is an extraordinary love story and a gently satirical celebration of the coincidental and the miraculous.

'Charming ... A thoughtful, gentle portrait of a small town packed with eccentricity' The Times 'A gifted and original novelist ... Lynch creates a likeable and diverse cast of characters' New York Times 'Wonderful ... tender, sad and leavened with wit ... Lynch has written not just a liberal critique of the war on terror but also a moving, optimistic rebuttal of our paranoia that encourages us to imagine, with Brandon, the possibility of flying over everything that divides us' Washington Post 'Its hero is an imaginative tour de force. Lynch's comic borderland is not only palpable, it is richly metaphoric' Globe and Mail

Jim Lynch grew up near Seattle, graduated from the University of Washington, and has worked as a journalist for the Seattle Times and The Oregonian, winning the Livingston Young Journalist Award and the H.L. Mencken Award among other national reporting honours. He is the author of The Highest Tide, a Richard & Judy bestseller. He lives with his wife and their daughter in Olympia, Washington.