Son of a Norwegian master-mariner, grandson of Kaloni, the last of the great Polynesian navigators, Gunnar Thorkild is a man consumed by a dream. Convinced that the Polynesians' legendary Island of the Dead is real, he risks his career, his life and those of his fellow venturers to find it - and they are shipwrecked on the very island they seek. To survive, even in this lush tropical paradise, they must make new laws of power and property, of sex and marriage.....