Set in the nineteenth century against a backdrop of island life and the vast surrounding seas, A High Wind in Jamaica is the gripping story of the Bas-Thornton children, whose parents send them back to England following a hurricane in the postcolonial Caribbean they call home. Having set sail, the children quickly fall into the hands of pirates. As their voyage continues, things take an awful turn.

Narrated largely from the perspective of the children, the supposed innocents are not only the victims of amoral behavior, but sometimes the perpetrators. Praised for its atypical and unsettling take on the truth of human nature, Richard Hughes' classic, first published in 1929, has been called one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.