When Gordo O’Connor answers the doorbell one night while he is home alone with his sons, he encounters an angry man who shoots him in the chest. Fortunately he escapes serious injury, but the gunshot begins a chain of events that alters the course of his life forever.

Gordo, his attorney wife, Ana, and their two young boys flee Galveston Island. None of them realizes that they will never again sleep in Pilot House, the graceful Victorian home that they love.

As they try to regain control of their lives, a beach house on the island’s far West End becomes a temporary refuge. Gordo is conscious of every curious sound, suspicious of strangers, and reluctantly begins to carry his father’s sleek Beretta .380.

Meanwhile, the police are oddly uninterested in the case, implying that Gordo may know more than he reveals about the shooter and his motivation. Gordo and Ana realize they are on their own. As they watch their once idyllic world come apart, each faces sexual temptation.

Gordo moves his family to the Texas Hill Country, and even that is not far enough away. Isle of Misfortune reaches a gripping conclusion when the stalker confronts Gordo for the last time.

Geoffrey Leavenworth knows whereof he writes. In 1994 he was shot by an unknown assailant who apparently had a fixation either on Leavenworth or his family. The shooter was never caught, and the family is cautious and vigilant to this day.