Near the Borderline

Geography is destiny in more ways in than one in this evocative memoir about growing up along the U.S.- Canadian border only to discover a darker identification with one's personal origins. An early devotee of the sport of hang-gliding introduces ski-flying at a mountain resort in Maine and goes on to compete in the first world hang-gliding championships in the Austrian Alps. After making a gliding tour of the western states, he returns east to spend a dark winter of the soul in an isolated cabin in the Thousand Islands, where a brother's abusive history eventually evokes a near-fatal response. As clinical research of his sibling's malady comes to light, the narrator begins an extended journey toward understanding and acceptance of a particularly insidious illness.