Book 1. A heart-shaped reef -- The dark -- The mast -- An irrational calm -- Whose fault? -- The thing about Dad -- Working with the waves -- Growing up at sea -- Shooting the moon -- Another day in paradise -- Seeing things -- An explosion -- Book 2. Angels -- Coals from Newcastle -- The "Julia Anne's" fate -- The lifeline -- The third break -- The monster -- A shared dawn -- An island home -- Escape plans -- The reef back home.

Successful businessman John Silverwood and his wife, Jean, both experienced sailors, decided the time was right to give their four children a taste of thrilling life on the high seas. And indeed their journey aboard the fifty-five-foot catamaran Emerald Jane would have many extraordinary and profound moments...Yet rather than flourishing amid the new freedoms and responsibilities thrust upon them, the children were sometimes confused, frightened, resentful. John's dream trip that began on Long Island Sound ended almost two years later as a nightmare in treacherous waters off a remote atoll in French Polynesia, where, in an explosion of awesome violence, the terrifying brunt of the ocean's anger fell upon the Emerald Jane--From publisher description.