Hundreds of miles from civilization, two ships wreck on opposite ends of the same deserted island in this true story of human nature at its best-and at its worst.

It is 1864, and Captain Thomas Musgrave's schooner, the Grafton, has just wrecked on Auckland Island, a forbidding piece of land 285 miles south of New Zealand. Battered by year-round freezing rain and constant winds, it is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death.

Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island, another ship runs aground during a storm. Separated by only twenty miles and the island's treacherous, impassable cliffs, the crews of the Grafton and the Invercauld face the same fate. And yet where the Invercauld's crew turns inward on itself, fighting, starving, and even turning to cannibalism, Musgrave's crew bands together to build a cabin and a forge-and eventually, to find a way to escape. 

Using the survivors' journals and historical records, award-winning maritime historian Joan Druett brings to life this extraordinary untold story about leadership and the fine line between order and chaos.