Meet Walt Longmire tonight

EDWARDS — Get your cowboy boots on, grab your hat and get ready to meet the new sheriff in town — the fictional Sheriff Walt Longmire of the mystery series by American novelist Craig Johnson, that is.

The first book of the mystery series, “Cold Dish,” is the One Book, One Valley selection for this spring. Over the next few months, Valley residents are encouraged to read the book and participate in a number of ongoing events at local bookstores, libraries and schools. “The Cold Dish” is celebrating its 10th anniversary and it is the first book of the Walt Longmire Mystery Series, which inspired A&E’s Longmire television series; recently, picked-up by Netflix.

The One Book, One Valley program kicked off in late January, but tonight at The Bookworm of Edwards at 6 p.m., readers will have the chance to meet the dry-witted, unflappable Wyoming sheriff as local actor Cooter Overcash steps into Longmire’s boots.

Overcash will start with a travelogue, talking about his fictional home in Wyoming and about “a guy named Craig Johnson who’s written all kinds of stories about me.” He’ll also answer some questions from the audience, but without giving away any surprises in the book, he said.

Overcash said he’s been acting as an amateur performer since he was in middle school, and when he was asked to impersonate Longmire, he hadn’t read the books yet. However, once he did, he was hooked and is now several books into the series. Putting himself into the boots of a modern-day sheriff presiding over an old-fashioned town wasn’t too difficult to do, he said.

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“You just more or less lay there thinking about being him. I grew up in the South around wranglers and cowboys, so you take some of these attributes, the good and the bad and meld them. One thing that’s really fun about being him is his literary background and his sense of humor,” said Overcash.

This event is free and open to the public.

Assistant Managing Editor Melanie Wong can be reached at 970-748-2927 or at mwong@vaildaily.com. Follow her on Twitter @mwongvail.