Character Showcase - Commander Sir Henry Thrasher

Sir Henry, known to his close friends as "Harry" and to the general public as "Dead Harry", is a former Commander in the Navy, forced to give up a promising career  when his mind suddenly stopped cooperating and behaving as it should.
Upon this very early retirement he was granted a knighthood to compensate, but without the career he has spent his life working for, Harry is lost and wandering without a purpose.
He lives in the family home of Woodbyne Abbey, which is falling down around his ears. He just cannot seem to put his mind to getting the roof fixed or the drafty windows mended. His life is stuck in one spot and, in fact, he is sometimes not entirely sure he's alive. He certainly knows he shouldn't be.

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            Since he barely knew what he might do from one day to the next, his mind having sudden, unpredictable spasms and memory losses, Harry had decided to avoid Society as much as possible. After the blow to his head at the Battle of Grand Port in 1810, the Naval doctors could not explain how Harry was still alive. The experts all had different theories, but no solid explanations. Once recovered, he had returned to sea and calmly resumed his career with a new command. But two years later he was shipwrecked. Believed gone for good this time, a memorial stone was raised, his house was shut up, and sailors from Plymouth to Botany Bay raised a toast to "Dead Harry". 

            The world was confounded once again, when it turned out that he had survived twenty-eight months on a tropical island. Rescued, shaved and respectably attired once more, it was expected that he could pick things up as he had before, but Harry was changed. A great many things that had not concerned him in the past, now drew his mind and attention away from those matters considered important by others. After so long alone on that island with nothing but his own company, he had grown accustomed to peace and the tranquility of internal musing. He could sit for hours pondering the arrangement of stars in the sky, or the slow burn of a log in his fire. Worst of all— an even stranger development— he suddenly felt no desire to fire a gun or a cannon at anybody.

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And so, having died twice, Harry feels as if his life has taken on the surreal tenor of one existing on borrowed time.

"When a man's obituary has been printed in the newspaper not once but twice, as he'd remarked to his aunt, one had a tendency, if not a duty, to believe it."

Read more about Harry and all the people trying to "fix" him in THE TROUBLE WITH HIS LORDSHIP'S TROUSERS. Out now from all online booksellers!

Jayne