RALEIGH, NC: Many have tried to describe Admiral Horatio Nelson. In so many ways, he was an enigma.
The new book I, Horatio by Donald A. Tortorice attempts to explain Admiral Nelson in a way no other text has. It is the first presentation to be narrated in the first person, a recounting of Nelson’s life in his own words.
This is a book of history and fiction. Its plot is taken from history. All of Nelson’s assignments, missions and engagements with the enemy are true. Tortorice presents a chronology based upon a timeline of events that actually happened. Letters, dispatches and many historical quotes are taken from historical fact and are presented in italics. However, major elements of the book are fiction.
We can never know exactly what Nelson may have been thinking and what he actually said during the various dramatic episodes of his life.
“I’ve been interested in his life since I was a midshipman at the University of Texas,” Tortorice says. “When I retired from teaching law, I spent the next two years writing this book.”
I, Horatio begins with Nelson as a young 21-year-old captain in the Caribbean and goes to his death at the Battle of Trafalgar.
Along the way his experiences in carrying out the vision of his duty in the Caribbean, Corsica, Tenerife, the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar cost him his eye, his right arm, and ultimately his life.
“This is his story as he would tell it,” Tortorice says.
About the author
Donald Tortorice is a retired attorney and law professor. For more than 20 years he was a partner in Duane Morris, LLP, an international law firm headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and for 13 years he taught as a professor at the Law School of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He also taught as a visiting professor at the Dickinson law school of Penn State University, the University of San Diego, and the University of Richmond. Don is an honors graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Law school of the University of California at Berkeley. He is also the author of The Modern Rules of Order and several law texts in the field of health law and bioethics. I, Horatio is his first novel. Prior to law school he served for five years as a US naval officer, serving initially aboard a destroyer named the USS John W. Thomason in the Pacific. In 1966–67, he commanded a swift boat in Vietnam, where he was awarded the individual Cross of Gallantry by the Republic of South Vietnam. He completed his naval career as an Assistant Professor of Naval Science at Yale University. Don currently resides in Pinehurst, North Carolina, where he plays golf, reads, writes and travels frequently.