The Switcher

A four-hundred-year saga is told within the confines of a single therapy session. On a rainy New York City night, a distinguished-looking man enters the office of psychologist Dr. Catherine Parker to reveal his story in a rather unusual encounter. Is the noted historian and biographer Robert Blakemore telling the truth, or is he engaged in a psychotic, suicidal fantasy destined to have him locked away in a mental hospital? He professes to have witnessed and been part of some of the horrors of the Tudor England period and now seeks relief by ending his life.

Blakemore states that he witnessed the torture and execution of the Protestant martyr Anne Askew, as well as the imprisonment and execution of the tragic Tudor figure Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen. Why and how he has lived so long, along with the tragedy (or insanity) of his own life, come to the fore in this gripping account.

It is up to Dr. Catherine Parker to utilize her clinical skills to determine the proper course of action to take. But Dr. Parker has dark secrets of her own that will be revealed in this illuminating therapy session. Secrets that Robert Blakemore seems all too familiar with. How does Dr. Parker's childhood near-death experience tie into the story that Blakemore is telling? And why did Blakemore choose Dr. Parker to hear his confessional?