Thomas O'Reiley is nineteen years old when he is accused of murder and flees for his life from San Francisco in the late eighteen-hundreds. Seeking refuge on a merchant sailing ship laden with cargo and bound for Australia, he is toughened to this new life at sea among the best and the worst of seamen and the awesome beauty and fury of nature. Existence as he has known it ends when he finds himself alone on an isolated island in the South Pacific. Days and weeks and months become years as his survival depends upon emergent courage and resourcefulness as well as the gradually awakening desire to reconcile his life in San Francisco and perhaps return to the young woman he barely knows. But the risks he faces are formidable as thousands of miles of open sea separate him from his ultimate destination. O'Reiley's Island is an account of courageous personal initiative, self awakening and determination as young O'Reiley faces the ghosts of his past and the awful uncertainty of his future-the hangman's noose.