Redhead by the Side of the Road

Chapter 1
 
You have to wonder what goes through the mind of a man like Micah Mortimer. He lives alone; he keeps to himself; his routine is etched in stone. At seven fifteen every morning you see him set out on his run. Along about ten or ten thirty he slaps the magnetic TECH HERMIT sign onto the roof of his Kia. The times he leaves on his calls will vary, but not a day seems to go by without several clients requiring his services. Afternoons he can be spot- ted working around the apartment building; he moonlights as the super. He ll be sweeping the walk or shaking out the mat or conferring with a plumber. Monday nights, before trash day, he hauls the garbage bins to the alley; Wednesday nights, the recycling bins. At ten p.m. or so the three squinty windows behind the foundation plantings go dark. (His apartment is in the basement. It is probably not very cheery.)
 
 
He s a tall, bony man in his early forties with not-so-good posture head lunging slightly forward, shoulders slightly hunched. Jet-black hair, but when he neglects to shave for a day his whiskers have started coming in gray. Blue eyes, heavy eyebrows, hollows in his cheeks. A clamped-looking mouth. Unvarying outfit of jeans and a T-shirt or a sweat- shirt, depending on the season, with a partially-erased- looking brown leather jacket when it s really cold. Scuffed brown round-toed shoes that seem humble, like a school-boy s shoes. Even his running shoes are plain old dirty-white sneakers none of the fluorescent stripes and gel-filled soles and such that most runners favor and his shorts are knee- length denim cutoffs.
 
He has a girlfriend, but they seem to lead fairly separate lives. You see her heading toward his back door now and then with a sack of takeout; you see them setting forth on a weekend morning in the Kia, minus the TECH HERMIT sign. He doesn t appear to have male friends. He is cordial to the tenants but no more than that. They call out a greeting when they

ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of more than twenty novels. Her twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

THE BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE

Anne Tyler has every gift a great novelist needs: intent observation, empathy and language both direct and surprising. She has unembarrassed goodness as well.  
New York Times Book Review

If ever there was a perfect time for a new Anne Tyler novel, it s now and this one doesn t disappoint . . . Heartwarming and very funny one of Tyler s best yet.  
People

Delicate and moving . . . Tyler s voice remains as vital as ever.  
Vanity Fair

[A] heartwarming balm for jangled nerves. . . . Tyler s novels are always worth scooping up.  
NPR

Entrancing . . . Tyler is an American Vermeer whose canvases keep opening whole worlds within compact frames. . . . As novelist Marilynne Robinson has observed, realism has been so predominant a literary style that it is easy to forget it is a style. One of its flawless practitioners is Anne Tyler, whose fiction maps the sea changes of her characters in carefully calibrated, deceptively understated prose . . . Tyler is a keen-eyed but tenderhearted social observer.
O, The Oprah Magazine

Affecting . . . Tyler has the rare ability to evoke the ordinary with particularity.
The New Yorker

There s always good reason to celebrate a new Anne Tyler novel. . . . Who else can make words sparkle with humor and tenderness in quite this way? . . . Hilarious and poignant. . . . A master at the small domestic moments that stand in for large and universal truths, Tyler never disappoints. This is a wonderful novel.  
Boston Globe

A work that makes you want to live more attentively . . . [Tyler s characters] are imagined with a curiosity and compassion seldom found in contemporary prose.  
Financial Times

Redhead by the Side of the Road is simply a delight . . . Tyler makes her craft look easy again.
The Missourian

Pitch-perfect . . . Tyler