Probably my favorite Susan Andersen hero ever is Elvis Donnelly from Exposure. There’s something so…wounded about him. He’s the sheriff of a small town, but he’s scarred – both physically and emotionally – by things that happened in his past.
One of the things that sets him apart from other heroes is that he’s missing a hand. Instead he has a hook. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think hook and the first image that pops into my head is Captain Hook. And that is so not hot. But Elvis? Elvis is totally hot. Even with a name like Elvis and a hook for a hand, I wanted to gobble him right up.
He must have been six feet, six inches tall and probably weighted somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred thirty pounds, all of it solid, khaki- and levi’s-covered muscle. But it wasn’t simply his size that caused her to stare. It was the sternness of his expression. It was the fact that his left arm ended in an artificial limb with a metal clip-style hook where his hand should have been, and that a wicked raised scar zigzagged across his left cheek like an inch-and-a-half-long lightning bolt, pointing to his full lower lip where it ended at the outside corner.
With his scars and missing hand, Elvis is definitely an unconventional hero. But he works. He works because once you look past the scar and his hook, you see he’s an amazing man.
Have you ever read a book with an unconventional hero? Did you love it despite your initial misgivings going in?
I am so glad you brought this up. I just read Indiscreet by Carolyn Jewel and the hero is definitely unconventional. I love it when the hero doesn’t fit the mold. It can totally work for me.
Actually, I prefer it when the hero is ugly. Well, not ugly, but let’s the heroine shine, so to speak.