FORTUNE ISLAND spans the last year in the life of Jessie Judas, a famed marine biologist and author, who has suffered most of her life from a haunting sense of something horrific in her past. Growing up practically orphaned, with little education, on a nearly deserted Outer Banks island, Jessie has the good luck to meet a visiting writer, a folklorist. The writer becomes Jessie¿s protector, mentor and, eventually, mother. Unknown to Jessie, her father, who has been serving time in prison since she was an infant, returns to the island, incognito. His only desire is to observe his daughter to make sure she¿s safe, and he has no intention of interfering in her life. He finds twelve-year-old Jessie living with her step-father, an eccentric traveling evangelist, who might well be psychopathic. But since Jessie is also under the protection of her friend, the folklorist, he¿s reluctant to reveal himself and intrude in her life. His hesitation to do so inadvertently triggers the event which creates in Jessie the sense of tragedy that ever after shadows her otherwise successful life.
