Border Songs by Jim Lynch is set in and around Blaine, Washington, a town right on the U.S./Canada border. Running eastwards from Blaine, the border between the two countries is very open, no fences no wires, simply a few markers and a shallow ditch. On the Canadian side runs Zero Avenue and on the American, Boundary Road. This border is a symbol of the trust and friendship that exists between the United States and Canada.

The author peoples his book with characters that are as unique as this open border. First and foremost, on the American side, we meet newly appointed border guard, 6’8” dyslexic Brandon Vanderkool who relates to animals and birds but has great difficulty with people. Brandon is in love with Canadian pothead Madeline Rousseau who has been running wild since her mother’s death, has started growing marijuana indoors. Between the Border Patrol and the smugglers/growers lie the regular inhabitants, the dairy farmers, retirees and property owners, many who make money on the side by turning a blind eye to strangers crossing their land during the night.

While there is plenty of action in this story what with arresting marijuana smugglers, suspected terrorists and vanloads of foreign prostitutes, it is really a wry, humorous story about our differences and similarities. And although the plot sort of fizzles out, the author’s charming and quirky characters engage the reader and make Border Songs an enjoyable portrait of life on the “border”. ( )

What a wild ride as readers fly with Brandon Vanderkool as he evolves into a magnet crime solver as a US Border Patrol!

Interwoven between British Columbia and the state of Washington
is his love for birds, painting, family and a desire for a partner who can appreciate his Dyslexian reactions.

BORDER SONGS delivers the most seamless weavings of birds into a novel!

"Birds are easy to talk to." ( )

This was just so much fun! Each chapter was opera, from first sentence to the last. What stays with me, though, is not the story line, but the characters. They are rich, and I want to get to know them better. There isn't one of them who is exactly as we think they are at first. (The vet, for example; the image of him trying to save the cows! Norm may not like him, but the guy is great in an emergency.) I'm glad.

What I learned from this book? How crucial it is that we encourage each other. Jim Lynch says it better, "...where he could look at his boat alone and anew through the lens of Madeline's confidence." p.288, paperback. May we help others look anew through the lens of our confidence in them. ( )

A fun satirical story about life on the border, the NORTHERN border. Brandon is a extremely tall dyslexic who is obsessed with art and birds. To get away from his family's dairy farm, get gets on the Border Patrol. Working primarily to capture illegal aliens and drug runners, he is somewhat preternaturally good at his job. Written in 2009, but given Canada's legalization of marijuana, it is a very "current" book. Really funny and worth the time.

"Everyone knows a CIA lab in Laos refined heroin in the seventies," Duval began, as if answering a question. "Then they used Noriega, of course, to trade guns for coke with the Contras in the eighties. Remember that? And in the nineties, it's undisputed that the agency supplied the camels to haul opium to labs along the Afghan-Paki order. So why would the U.S. allow the legalization of cannabis when it knows it would forfeit its ability to manipulate the world?" ( )

3.5 stars

Dyslexic Brandon Vanderkool has just joined the Border Patrol, but he would rather be working on his father’s dairy farm, exploring the woods, watching birds, and painting. Madeline Rousseau lives next door, just across the ditch that marks the US-Canadian border. Her father, Wayne, is a retired professor with multiple sclerosis who uses cannabis medicinally. Brandon’s father, Norm, has a bum knee, a dairy farm in trouble, and a wife with early Alzheimer’s. Into this mix add a masseuse who collects all the local gossip, and a drug lord who is recruiting growers and smugglers.

There is a certain magical realism to this book, though I hesitate to categorize it as such. Brandon has unusual gifts – he’s either incredibly lucky or is getting tipped off, because he catches more drug smugglers, potential terrorists and illegal aliens in his first weeks on the job than any two other officers. This serves as a basic plot outline for the book, but it is much more than that. The reader begins to explore Brandon’s odd way of looking at the world, of interacting with it, of representing it in his art. Some people claim to have seen him “fly.” Brandon certainly seems more attuned to the animal kingdom, especially the birds that so fascinate him, than to the people he works with or even his own family.

Lynch is writing about more than just the border between the US and Canada. He is also writing about the borders between neighbors, between members of the same family, between men and women, between man and nature, between feeling secure and feeling threatened. His viewpoint keeps the reader off balance, not sure what to make of happenings in and around the poorly marked border between Washington and British Columbia. No one in this book is a skilled communicator, and much is left unsaid. Brandon, in particular, keeps most of his thoughts to himself, yet is the one person who functions with little thought to these many borders.

I liked the book but it’s difficult to categorize, and I’m not sure to whom I would recommend it. ( )