Border Songs Excerpt and Giveaway

Jason Chambers: Some time ago, Dennis wrote about how much he was liking Jim Lynch’s forthcoming novel Border Songs, calling the story seductive and exciting, and a welcome change from the urban plight of his recent reads. It’s on my short list of books for the Summer, so this piques my interest as well.

Now, you have the opportunity to make up your own mind. Thanks to our good friends at Knopf, we are fortunate enough to present this short exerpt for your perusal. Don’t forget to read all the way to the end for the ARC giveaway. So, without any further waffling on, here it is:

Border Songs by Jim Lynch

I

EVERYONE REMEMBERED the night Brandon Vanderkool flew

across the Crawfords’ snowfield and tackled the Prince and Princess of

Nowhere. The story was so unusual and repeated so vividly so many

times that it braided itself into memories along both sides of the border

to the point that you forgot you hadn’t actually witnessed it yourself.

The night began like the four before it, with Brandon trying not to

feel like an impostor as he scanned the fields, hillsides and roads for

people, cars, sacks, shadows or anything else that didn’t belong, doubting

once again he had whatever it took to become an agent.

He rolled past Tom Dunbar’s dormant raspberry fields, where in a

fit of patriotism Big Tom had built a twenty-foot replica of the Statue

of Liberty, which was either aging swiftly or perhaps, as the old man

claimed, had been vandalized by Canadians. Brandon reluctantly

waved at the Erickson brothers—who laughed and mock-saluted once

they recognized him in uniform—and rattled past Dirk Hoffman’s

dairy, where Dirk himself stood on a wooden stepladder completing

his latest reader-board potshot at the environmentalists: mouthwash

is a pesticide too! Brandon tapped his horn politely, then swerved

through semifrozen potholes across the center line to get a cleaner look

at the fringed silhouette of a red-tailed hawk, twenty-six, the white

rump of a northern flicker, twenty-seven, and, suspended above everything,

the boomerang shape of a solo tree swallow, twenty-eight.

Brandon traversed the streets of his life now more than ever, getting

paid, so it seemed, to do what he’d always loved doing, to look closely…

—-Excerpted from Border Songs by Jim Lynch. Copyright © 2009 by Jim Lynch. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

JC: So there you have it. Thanks to Jim and Knopf. As I mentioned above, it just so happens that we have a few advanced reading copies of Border Songs to give away, so send us a comment if you are interested. Don’t forget to check back later for Jim’s interview with Dennis.