This thrills-and-spills account of love conquering all pits order against chaos. Emily, from a liberal academic suburban American family, believes every minor action has consequences and every life event is connected. Chaos is Sam's territory: his psychotic conman father has kept him and his little brother Riddle adrift for years. The boys' surname is Border, and they are confined to the margins of society, moving towns several times a year, scavenging to survive. Sam tries to create order through music, and the almost mute Riddle does intricate technical drawings, but his father's whims have taught Sam to expect that the worst will happen, which it does.
When Emily's spurned suitor, Bobby Ellis, turns amateur private detective and scares the Border family out of town, the couple's future is at the mercy of coincidences, collisions and the brutality of the universe.
The story of Sam and Emily's relationship, besieged by the adult world and, later, by the elements, builds tension in the manner of One Day and Cold Mountain, with the reader barely able to draw breath. The most compelling aspect is the effect of the encounter with Sam and Riddle on Emily's parents, Tim and Debbie: well-meaning public servants who find their professional nurturing skills and consciences inadequate for two boys who have rarely had a hot meal or a kind word. Sam's guarded response to the family's generosity challenges them more than Riddle with his straightforward needs. Debbie's maternal instinct makes her prepared to sidestep officialdom to help Riddle, while a more wary Tim is won over by Sam's musicianship.
The narrative, told in multiple third-person voices, has a tone of inevitability. In line with Emily's belief in an ordered universe, the young people's future is being invisibly determined by others who are committed to their own vision of order, from the meticulous hairdresser unwittingly grooming Sam for the new phase of his life to the coin collector determined to restore what has been lost to its rightful owner. This is a story that demands and repays irrational faith in destiny.
