“If you could see the writer’s mind as a living, breathing thing, it might look like Ishmael wandering the narrow streets of New England before climbing aboard the ill-fated Pequod. Or perhaps like Sal Paradise passing a bottle among Okies on a flatbed bound for California. It might look like Captain Nemo diving 20,000 leagues below the surface of the sea. Or it might look like Robert Walker, the aptly named protagonist of Corey Mesler’s latest novel by the same name, as he walks the streets of Memphis from Overton Park to the Mississippi River, to the University of Memphis and back again.” 
That is the opening to my review of Robert Walker in the September 2016 issue of Memphis magazine. Since reading Corey’s newest offering, I feel as though I’ve seen this traveling man, Robert Walker, at every turn — as I ride my bike through Overton Park, stop into Memphis Made for a pint, or even visiting Burke’s Book Store, the 140-year-old shop that Corey and his wife Cheryl own in Cooper-Young. This will be the site Thursday, September 29th, of a reading and signing by Corey.
From Goodreads: “Robert Walker is homeless. He awakes one morning in his box to find half his face paralyzed. In anguish, he walks to mimic normality. He also walks because walking for him is life. Eventually, in opposition to his dedication to desired anonymity, he is forced to rejoin the world. The novel follows two crucial days in his journey while he traverses Memphis, encountering the familiar, the foreign, the desolate, and the joyous.”
Corey has published more than 30 novels and poetry collections. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. His fiction has received praise from John Grisham, Robert Olen Butler, Lee Smith, Frederick Barthelme, Ann Beattie, Peter Coyote, Steve Yarbrough, and Greil Marcus, among others. If you stop by Thursday evening, be sure and pick up one (or all!) of Corey’s other books, I’m sure he’d be happy to sign those for you as well.
Corey Mesler
Burke’s Book Store
936 S. Cooper Street
Thursday, September 29th
5:30 p.m.
