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    Border Songs
    Border Songs
    Border Songs
    Audiobook10 hours

    Border Songs

    Written by Jim Lynch

    Narrated by Richard Poe

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Acclaimed author Jim Lynch sets Border Songs along a 30-mile strip of Washington state and British Columbia. When severely dyslexic Brandon Vanderkool is forced to join the Border Patrol, he learns the border is a haven for illegal drug smugglers and other criminals. Meanwhile, disease has struck his father's herd, and his mother is battling something even more debilitating. Each will have to fight for hope in a world changing too fast.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 28, 2009
    ISBN9781440760075
    Border Songs
    Author

    Jim Lynch

    Jim Lynch is the author of three novels, The Highest Tide, Border Songs and Truth Like The Sun. Before becoming a full-time novelist Lynch wrote for newspapers throughout the Northwest and beyond, winning the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, the George Polk Award and other national honors. He now lives in Olympia, Washington with his wife and daughter.

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    Reviews for Border Songs

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      This is a very entertaining tale set in the area of a Pacific Northwest unmanned border crossing between the U.S. and Canada. Brandon Vanderkool - one of a great lineup of characters - has been hired by the Border Patrol. He is 6 foot 8, severely dyslexic, but brilliant at catching smugglers - mostly by chance. He is also a talented but unrecognized artist. This is a quirky but believable story, thanks to the characters and the absorbing tale that can reveal real-life heartache as well as joy. I'll be looking for more by Jim Lynch. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      In Border Songs, Jim Lynch deftly paints a portion of the Canadian-U.S. border that separates Washington from British Colombia. Tension caused by politics and the U.S. effort to secure the border has driven a rift between communities and friends that for years were used to hopping the ditch that constitutes a section of the border to visit between countries. Now a nub of a joint thrown across the ditch in derision, or a late-night incursion to shoot out a new border camera are what passes for interaction, except for the constant flow south of smuggled bodies and loads of B.C. Bud, which the U.S. Border Patrol does its best to stop. Brandon Vanderkool is a new Border Patrol agent who just happened to grow up in Blaine within spitting distance of the border, and still lives there with his parents on the failing family dairy farm.Brandon is a 6’ 8”, 23 year old, severely dyslexic, sensitive innocent who watches birds obsessively. He paints birds, and everyone he has arrested, and creates temporary sculptures from natural materials, sometimes on duty, which results in an embarrassing incident. He also happens to be extraordinarily skilled at catching smugglers. Brandon’s mother is losing her memory. His father is struggling with the farm and the temptation of easy money to be made by looking the other way. Brandon is unused to the attention he is getting by making high-profile arrests, and is trying to reconnect with Madeline Rousseau, a Canadian childhood friend turned bud smuggler.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      I read the whole thing. Mostly because it was set in my hometown. I knew the streets, I knew the players, I knew the problems. However, I was disappointed in the character development, lack of a discernable plot, and the strange, unsatisfying ending with this story. It was clear that the author was trying to present and detail life on our northern border but the story he used to carry the unorganized box of facts he was pushing just didn't do it for me.
    • 4/5
      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”.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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?"
    • 5/5
      Beautiful, top-notch writing. Jim Lynch is becoming a favorite author.
    • 2/5
      Members of my book group found the writing style strange, but I liked it. The characters are engaging and quirky, and the situations, believe it or not, are realistic. My problem with the book is that the author (a former journalist) seems to have interviewed locals and strung together fictionalized versions of news reports and called it a novel. What frustrates me the most is that there are several times within the story when something major is about to happen...and then it doesn't happen. I was left wondering what was the point of the whole thing.
    • 3/5
      It was okay. The main character wasn't terribly real, or realistic, but some of the description of the area was interesting enough that I kept reading anyway. I've read worse.
    • 4/5
      As the four stars implies, I liked this book. In fact I really liked this book, but this year I am getting tougher on what gets a full five stars. In years past this book and his most recent would have been five stars (what a reviewer cop-out).

      This book is the story of the U.S. Canadian border in WA state, it is a story of the people that live there, but ultimately it is the story of Brandon Vanderkool, how he interacts with the world and how the world interacts with him. Brandon is a huge (6'8"), dyslexic, in-tuned man who never quite fit in. He is wonder for those around him, a natural as a border patrol agent, and has a serious connection to the natural world. I found myself also struck by wonder by this larger than life (metaphorically and literally) character.

      I think it would be fair to think of him as the hub of the wheel that makes up this story. What really fascinated me though are the spokes of that wheel, the individuals living along the border, each with their own set of problems and concerns, their lives so real and important. It is their story and their connections to Brandon that really bring the whole thing to life.

      Not only is this is a book worth reading, it's a book I'll likely reread in a couple of years.
    • 4/5
      I live where this novel is set, so my awareness of the places and even some of the characters in it may have biased me, so I only gave it 4 starts to compensate for any bias. This is a rare gem, a comedy told in such lyrical prose that I doubt the northern stretches of Whatcom County will ever be better immortalized.
    • 4/5
      The characters are what makes this book really enjoyable. The storyline is quirky and a bit absurd, but the characters are even quirkier, very interesting, and very engaging.
    • 5/5
      Brandon Vanderkool grew up on a dairy farm that skirts the Canadian border. All his life, he has regarded the people across the road--in another country--as his neighbours. Socially awkward, due in part to being 6'8" and extremely dyslexic, Brandon excels at art, is an avid birdwatcher, and notices things that other people don't. Somehow he has fallen into a job as a border patrol agent, and surprises everyone by excelling at this too. With seemingly little effort, Brandon becomes a star employee by sweeping up human traffickers, possible terrorists, and a lot of drug smugglers.Brandon is an endearing quirky character in a novel full of quirky endearing characters. There is his kind dad Norm, who is struggling to keep the family farm from collapsing; his wise mom who is showing signs of early-onset Alzheimers; his boyhood crush, Madeline, over on Zero Avenue, and her grumpy retired professor father, who likes to stand on his deck smoking pot and taunting his US neighbours. These are some of the characters that are seeing their lives change in a post-911 world where the US government jumps at every shadow that darkens the border.This book is interesting, funny, smart--the whole package. Lynch obviously did his research well in exploring the subculture of life on the border. This is an area that I know fairly well (my dad's family dairy farm--which, like many of the dairy farms in the book, is now a raspberry farm--sits atop the Canadian side of the border), and the author gets the little details right. That always scores extra points from me. He also does an admirable job of weaving in facts and philosophy surrounding the multi-billion dollar marijuana industry (his journalism background shows here).Recommended for: readers who like intelligent, interesting books with quirky characters.
    • 4/5
      A beautifully written story with an interesting cast of characters. The setting along the Washington/Canada border was one I hadn't come across before. I really enjoyed this book and will definitely pick up his other one soon.
    • 2/5
      I was hesitant to review this title, because I listened to it rather than read it, and I'm afraid my negative reaction was influenced by a dreadful, loud, hectoring narrator, like Andy Rooney in a bad mood. Possibly in print, I would have been charmed by Brandon, a dyslexic gentle giant, and I would have been amused by the acerbic former professor Wayne Russo and I would have had empathy for struggling farmer Norm. But as it was (and tormented by that irritating voice) I found the story too quirky by half and I just wanted it to be over.
    • 4/5
      I loved Jim Lynch’s first novel, a coming of age story about a boy, a girl, and the creatures of the sea, called The Highest Tide. There is a passage in The Highest Tide in which a reporter asks the young protagonist Miles why it is that he’s always finding things no one else does: “Because I’m always looking … and there are so many things to see.” The reporter continues: “So, maybe… when you found that squid, maybe the earth is trying to tell us something. And if so, what do you think it’s saying?” Miles hesitated and replied, “It’s probably saying, ‘Pay attention.’”In Border Songs, Lynch again tackles similar themes with a boy who pays attention, a girl he loves, and the incredible diversity of Mother Nature's progeny. Although the main character, Brandon Vanderkool, is twenty-three, I would also consider this another coming of age book: Brandon is dyslexic and it is likely he has Asperger’s Syndrome; his development has been slower than other people's. In fact, he has much in common with the boy in Francisco Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World, who has Asperger's. Brandon is 6’8” tall, socially and physically awkward, and he rocks back and forth and gets his words backwards when he is nervous (which is basically most of the time when he is not alone). He is incapable of “posing.” His dad runs a failing dairy farm, his mom has early Alzheimer’s, and they live on the ill-defined border between the U.S. and Canada in Blaine, at the top left corner of Washington State. The U.S./Canadian border is 4200 miles long, and much of it is “less delineated than the average cul-de-sac.” Brandon recently signed up with the Border Patrol to help out with expenses at home. It’s really his first time out “in the real world.” He was home schooled because of all the teasing, and doesn’t really know how to interact socially very well. But since he was young, he has been in love with his childhood friend right across the border, Madeline Rousseau.Brandon turns out to be a huge success as a Border Patroller, because he pays attention to things others do not. He knows that if an owl screeches, or a heron takes flight, or birdsong changes, someone is moving through the area. He also goes to places other do not - looking for different birds, or constructing artwork out of nature. But it seems like he’s always interrupted; incursions across the border are constant. Would-be terrorists and vans full of human cargo make regular runs across his territory. And since the cultivation and use of marijuana is widespread on the Canadian side, there is also an especially large traffic in “buds” and money.The narrative point of view moves back and forth across the border as well: sometimes we hear from Brandon or his father Norm, and sometimes from Madeline or her father Wayne. Madeline grows marijuana and is kept high and in the thrall of a shady dealer. Wayne uses marijuana for medicinal reasons; he has Multiple Sclerosis. He spends what he believes are his last days seeking to experience "greatness" by replicating the experimental processes followed by geniuses throughout history. Dionne, Brandon’s earthy supervisor, and Sophie, Brandon’s nosy but charming neighbor, also take an occasional narrative lead. Dionne is funny, chunky, sexy, droll, sardonic, focused, and absolutely someone you want to go drinking with, even if you don’t drink. Sophie is everything to everyone, depending on what they want, but with the added humorous touch that both parties are aware of the dynamic.Besides being with Madeline, Brandon is happiest when he experiences the rich variety of bird life by the Semiahmoo Bay [a habitat which supports more than 333 species and is called Canada’s most important birding area]. After one social occasion to which he was obliged to go, he thought:"Talking was a letdown after the day he’d had. That morning he’d counted thirty-two species, including skinny oystercatchers, black-bellied plovers, western sandpipers and Pacific loons fresh from the north. The valley felt alive again. The night before he’d driven out to the old Sumas Customs House before sunset and waited thirty-five minutes before a lone Vaux’s swift swooped into view. After that slender bird disappeared into one of the two bulky chimneys, there was a pause before another dozen dove into the hole, followed by hundreds more, foraging the twilight for insects on their downward spiral, several hundred swifts forming a tall funnel that swirled into the same chimney like a genie returning to its bottle.”Discussion: Lynch clearly loves the habitat of the bays of Washington State, and shares his passion for its beauty and abundance in his two books, The Highest Tide, and now Border Songs. His work also shows a wry and tender sympathy for young boys in love, and his other colorful characters are rendered with such care and affection that you can’t help but come to share Lynch’s obvious fondness for them.The border issues, which weave all the people together in this book, are interesting and very timely. With so much focus in the news on the southern border, this book should serve as a corrective to the imbalance in our awareness of the geopolitical landscape.Evaluation: If you have not picked up a book by Jim Lynch, you are missing out on a very talented author. His simple stories, with their quiet wit and absorbing and evocative descriptions of the inhabitants (both human and non) of the Northwest, are full of compassion for the human race, interesting facts about nature, and a subtle optimism that overtakes you by the end. I highly recommend both of the books discussed here!
    • 5/5
      Great characters. I loved the ending
    • 5/5
      This is a wonderful, funny, touching story about Brandon Vanderkool, a young, severely dsylexic Border Patrol officer in Washington state. Brandon sees the world differently from most people and his dsylexia makes speaking and understanding others a challenge at times. Accompanying Brandon in this story of cross-border drug smuggling, illegal migration and friendships, are Canadian and American families living with various illnesses, economic challenges and personal relationships.Brandon's parents (Norm and Jeannette) are running a struggling dairy farm and dealing with Jeannette's memory loss. Brandon's friend Madeleine Rousseau is involved in drug smuggling and struggling to keep her life on an even keel. They, and all the other characters along the border, are well drawn and add to the richness of this story.
    • 5/5
      I loved Brandon - he's so genuine. His gift of observation delivers many arrests for the border patrol and results in bewilderment for him. He's not sure that it's to anyone's benefit except perhaps his supervisors who are racking up more arrests than they dreamed of. The families along the Washington/Canada border are all interesting - failed dairy farms, mcmansions and a thriving underground pot economy, not to mention the iimmigrants alogn the border. Brandon's own father and mother fight battles with illness and problems with the herd, including beloved Pearl. His childhood friend Madeline becomes involved in the pot production and her father trys to duplicate Einsteins experiments. All in all, Lynch has written a character rich quirky story of people who just don't quite fit in with mainstream Canada or America - I enjoyed every one of them.
    • 4/5
      Sometimes confusing account of lives on the Washington State/Canadian border. Marijuana and immigration problems beset a young Dyslexic Border Patrol Officer, Brandon Vanderkool, but it is his attraction to a beautiful but lost Canadian drug-runner that captured my sympathy. Beautifully written character development; Brandon's personality and sensitivity make the book a fascinating read.
    • 4/5
      I lost count of how many times the novel “Confederacy of Dunces” popped into my head as I read Jim Lynch’s “Border Songs,” but I do not mean anything even remotely negative about Border Songs when I say that. Lynch’s new novel has a certain “Confederacy of Dunces” vibe about it that will appeal to fans of that memorable John Kennedy Toole novel of almost thirty years ago – and that is a good thing. Unusual physical specimens, big men generally perceived by their friends and families to be of the hapless misfit variety, anchor both novels. And as Toole did for his “Dunces” hero, Lynch surrounds Brandon Vanderkool with quirky characters and plops the lot of them into a unique part of the country – two countries, actually – a little rural community living on both sides of the Washington/British Columbia border. Brandon Vanderkool, six foot eight and so dyslexic that he speaks parts of his sentences backward in times of stress, is a loner whose father pushes him from the family’s small dairy farm into a job with the U.S. Border Patrol. Suddenly, Brandon is responsible for protecting the very border along which he has spent his entire life and, to everyone’s surprise, he turns out to be a natural. As a passionate bird watcher, he is so finely attuned to the comings and goings of the local bird population that he almost unconsciously senses when something is out of place. That sense of place allows Brandon to become one of the stars of the Border Patrol, a one-man wrecking crew when it comes to stopping illegal aliens and pot from crossing the border from the Canadian side. Brandon’s duties with the Border Patrol, though, bring him into daily contact with people he has known all his life, many of whom who still ridicule him out of habit and find it difficult to accept his new position of authority despite all his success.“Border Songs” is a character driven novel and Jim Lynch has populated his little international community with some good ones. Brandon’s father, Norm, whose dairy herd is desperately ill, is shocked and even a little embarrassed by all the attention Brandon is getting around town. Norm, by nature a dreamer and a worrier, is also terrified at how rapidly Brandon’s good-natured mother is losing her memory. Madeline Rousseau, to whom Brandon still imagines he has a special bond, grew up within sight of Brandon’s house but on the Canadian side of the ditch separating the two countries. Now, though, she works for a major pot smuggler and she and Brandon are on different sides of the border in more than one sense. Madeline’s father, a retired professor, stays busy these days yelling anti-American slogans across the ditch at Norm and trying to replicate great inventions of the past by meticulously recreating the original step-by-step research of the actual inventors. Then there is Sophie, the newly arrived masseuse and gossip collector who video tapes interviews with willing customers and seems to be the only person on either side of the border who has the big picture. “Border Songs” is a comic look at life on an international border, in this case, a border that is nothing more than a drainage ditch serving the two countries it divides. It is a clear reminder that, while borders are important and necessary, their effects are sometimes absurd, especially when seen through the eyes of those who live so near them.Rated at: 4.0
    • 5/5
      Brandon Vanderkool’s colleagues on the US Border Patrol rightly call him a “s--- magnet.” A newbie agent on a 30-mile sector between Washington and British Columbia (where the international border is sometimes a mere ditch between neighbors’ yards), Brandon is freakishly tall, dyslexic and probably autistic, an avid birder and artist -- with eyes that are “really, really wide open […] it’s like he expects something to happen at every moment, no matter where he is or what he’s doing.”And happen it does -- from stumbling upon trucks full of illegal immigrants while searching for solitude, to finding contraband where he’s birding -- all to the reader’s amazement and amusement, but to Brandon’s utter dismay since his disabilities make the paperwork and notoriety a nightmare. But when he happens upon a stolen car with a Middle-Eastern driver, a trunkful of explosives, and a map to Seattle’s Space Needle, everything changes. The Feds descend, the Patrol gathers reinforcements, and local social and political stresses heat to a boil.Still, it’s a comic boil, deepened by subplots involving a terrific set of secondary characters and eclectic townspeople. A thoughtful, engaging, and thoroughly entertaining read.