Beginning ~ with his run at 7:15 a.m.

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.

Redhead by the Side of the Road ~ by Anne Tyler, 2020, fiction (Maryland)

Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit.  A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life.  But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son.  These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.  This is an intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes.

This novel is part of the library loot I got yesterday.  I've been reading more nonfiction than fiction lately, so I am really ready for a story by Anne Tyler.  I can get lost in her books, totally absorbed in the lives of her characters.  What I've read so far at the beginning of this book seems like it will take my mind off the pandemic as I follow Micah Mortimer as he runs through the streets of Baltimore.  I'm ready.

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