Last year’s Pacific Northwest Bookseller award-winner, Olympia author Jim Lynch, to speak at Eagle Harbor as part of nationwide tour for his new book “Border Songs.”

Jim Lynch is a master of observation. The Olympia-based author wields the power of journalism in his novels to a striking degree, creating characters who are extremely, and enigmatically, observant of their natural surroundings.

“The power of journalism is that it allows you to write beyond what you know,” Lynch said.

For instance, his first book “The Highest Tide,” last year’s Pacific Northwest Booksellers award winner, with its colorful descriptions of the alien-like creatures of the Puget Sound tide flats probably couldn’t have been written by a non-journalist, unless that person happened to be a marine biologist type.

“And I think it helps me in ‘Border Songs’ as well,” Lynch said. “I had to learn about herding and diary farming, border patrolling and marijuana smuggling.”

In his new novel — ‘Border Songs’ — lynch goes to the Canadian border, observing what he calls one of the most dramatic landscapes in the state through an awkward six-foot-eight, severely dyslexic kid named Brandon who’s just joined the border patrol. Amidst a feverish crack down following 9/11, with the right set of eyes, Brandon rises above it.

Lynch will read from ‘Border Songs’ at 3 p.m. June 28 at Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way on Bainbridge. Info: www.thehighesttide.com, www.eagleharborbooks.com.