Reading and Book Signing with Joseph Coulson

JOIN US

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1st

5:30 TO 6:30 pm

for a reading and book signing

with

JOSEPH COULSON

author of

The Prince of Memphis

($22 paperback, $35 hardcover)

order a signed copy

Aron Beale is the unacknowledged son of Elvis—and a Black mother, Clara Mae Beale—the result of a chance meeting at New York’s Warwick Hotel in the summer of ’56. Few know Aron’s secret, and his mid-life plan to publish a revealing memoir brings out lawyers from Graceland, religious fanatics, and death threats aiming to silence him. But his decades-old, chart-topping song, “Midnight Candy,” catches the ear of a young journalist, Odelia Jane Phillips, triggering an unlikely love affair and a partnership in writing and adventure—a shared mission to confront and expose the conspirators who would bury Aron’s controversial book.

Grounded in pop culture, The Prince of Memphis immerses readers in a dreamlike journey from Detroit to Las Vegas to the Birthplace of Rock ’n’ Roll. Along the way we encounter a haunted jukebox that plays whatever it wants (and mostly it wants “The King”), a “Hall of Fame junkyard” of Elvis memorabilia, and a tattooed lady who gives tours of her body—tours that end with the gates of Graceland. As Aron and Odelia’s relationship collides with the magnetic pull of Aron’s past, they find themselves on a musical odyssey, racing through the shadowlands bordering black and white and reckoning all the while with an absent father who is endlessly present.

JOSEPH COULSON is a novelist, poet, playwright, and musician. His first novel, The Vanishing Moon, was selected for the Barnes & Noble Great New Writers series and won the Book of the Year Award in Literary Fiction from ForeWord Magazine. His second novel, Of Song and Water, was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award. Coulson holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He worked for several years at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago, first as Editorial Director and then, after a ten-year hiatus, as President. He is now President and Chief Academic Officer at Harrison Middleton University. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area.