I can’t remember quite where I read the review that caused me to hunt down a copy of Jim Lynch’s Border Songs, but to whomever that now anonymous-to-me reviewer/singer of praise was, I express great thanks. This book is one of the most unique and wonderful books I have read in a good while; it is thick with well-drawn characters and original writing. Each adjective I conjure to attempt to describe this book doesn’t quite satisfy me. “Quirky” or “magical” doesn’t do the book justice; Lynch is too subtle and gifted of a writer to be tagged as “quirky” and “magical” is a corny way to describe something anyways.

Basically, this book is the story of a well-loved, six-foot-eight, twentysomething social misfit, Brandon Vanderkool, and the upstate Washington town where he lives. Deterred by his father from continuing the family dairy farming business, Brandon signs up for the Border Patrol, keeping an eye on the US-Canadian border. As a rookie, Brandon begins making enormous drug busts by mysteriously, accidentally being in the right place at the right time. In the forest watching birds, his favorite pastime, he stumbles upon three men and $300,000 worth of marijuana. It is as if the job is his calling. Tension mounts on the previously innocuous US-Canadian border, just a ditch really, as the Border Patrol increases its presence and crackdown on Canadian drug smugglers and purported terrorists. Lynch comments on the insane American ‘culture of fear’ with great subtlety devoid of the exhausting didacticism that plagues the writing of most social critics.

Attempting to compare this book with others recalls in my mind distant memories of Richard Russo’s Empire Falls or John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, both of which I read several years ago. To me, Border Songs is similar to these books in that they all contain singularly imagined characters doing realistic but unexpected things. The people in these books live in a realistically drawn and contemporary society, but things are just slightly out of the ordinary, or difficult to explain with hard facts and logic. The protagonists are off-beat but exceedingly human, the kinds of people who see life through a frame most of us don’t.

Do yourself a favor and read Border Songs. Then do a friend a favor and pass a copy along.