Where to BEgin
A Guide to Reading Al Dawson’s Catalog
Start Here
Begin with Searching for Noriko because Frankie Castillo introduces something that runs through every Al Dawson novel: the idea that the most important battles are not fought in courtrooms or on borders, but in the space between who we were and who we needed to become.
Â
His story establishes the emotional and moral DNA of the entire catalog. Reading it first means that everything that follows, every institution, every betrayal, every hard-won positive ending, lands with the full weight it was intended to carry.
Â
There is also a detail in this book that will mean something to you when you reach the third novel. A character named Jace Kelly was written as part of a subplot for this manuscript, alongside two other characters named Joan and Redfish, before the entire thread was cut at the editor’s suggestion. His name will come back to you in Borderlines, and when it does, the catalog will feel like something more than three separate books.
The Question Deepens
Where Searching for Noriko is about the weight of personal promises, Priest is about the weight of institutional ones. The question it asks is larger and darker: what do we owe the people the institution we serve has failed in secret?
Â
Priest was written by a former Franciscan priest candidate who lived inside the question it raises. That authenticity is present on every page and it is what distinguishes this novel from every other thriller that uses the Church as a backdrop.
The Stakes Become Personal
Borderlines is where the moral universe Al Dawson has been building since Searching for Noriko reaches its fullest expression. The institution that fails this time is the federal government itself. The cost is the most personal yet.
Â
Readers who begin the catalog with Searching for Noriko will recognize something here that readers who start with Borderlines will miss: Jace Kelly was always meant to exist in this world. He was written into a subplot for Al Dawson’s first manuscript alongside Joan and Redfish, before the entire thread was cut before publication. Their return in Borderlines is the quiet completion of something that began in Okinawa in 1945.
About the Author
Al Dawson spent decades inside the institutions his fiction examines. He understands, from the inside, how they work and how they fail the people who trusted them. His protagonists are not rebels. They are insiders who discover that the systems they devoted their lives to are capable of a betrayal they did not see coming. They come through. Scarred, but successfully.
Â
Al Dawson has always preferred positive endings.
Â
He lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida with his wife Jane. He publishes under Luna del Lobo Books.