Books by Jim Lynch

Democracy by its very nature is a difficult form of government to administer. It is messy. There are many conflicting ideas of how to do things. In order to enact any programs, you must build consensus. There is a lot of give-and-take in the process. In the end few people get everything they want. The democratic process is further complicated by the elected officials who are supposed to administer it. They are not perfect people. They wrestle with the same foibles as all of us. They are easily distracted, are inconsistent, lack the proper knowledge, and in some cases are just downright incompetent. Plus, they possess some of our common moral weaknesses: pride, envy, jealousy, laziness, just to name a few. So in the end American democracy will never be perfect. The best we can hope for is that we can make it better. This should be our ambition and our goal. This is the story of one individual who entered the political arena. It tells what he tried to accomplish, and what he learned.

Brandon Vanderkool thinks in pictures. 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.

A poignant coming-of-age story and a gripping novel of natural wonder, rejacketed to coincide with the publication of Jim Lynch's new novel, Border Songs