Porto Bello Gold

This is the secret history Stevenson never told. Set decades before Treasure Island, this novel reveals the origins of the legendary treasure that would make names like Long John Silver famous. Robert Ormerod works in a respectable New York fur trading office, far from the sea, until he learns that the dreaded pirate Captain Rip-Rap is actually his own great-uncle Murray. As Robert is drawn into his family's bloody past, he witnesses the raid that sacks a Spanish galleon of its golden hoard, watches Captain Flint and Murray bury their wealth on Dead Man's Chest and the island that would one day be called Treasure Island, and discovers that respectability is a thin mask over generations of violence. The novel asks what we owe to the crimes of our ancestors, and whether blood will out despite our best efforts at respectability. For readers who ever wondered where the treasure came from, this 1924 adventure provides a thunderously entertaining answer.