[In the following review, Saari contends that Stone is a “writer of rare power” who successfully examines the darker side of human nature in works such as Outerbridge Reach.]

This novel [Outerbridge Reach] continues the themes that run through all of Stone's books and reinforces why he is regarded as a writer of rare power. He persuades through his understanding of the darker side of human motivation, and his literary progenitors are clearly Melville and Hawthorne. In this new novel the classic themes of obsession and confrontation with the unknown and evil take a new twist when atypical Stone protagonists—upright Owen Browne and his wife, Anne—leave their sheltered middle-class existence and seek a future of risk and danger.

Usually Stone characters like teetering on the edge of life and its possibilities by actively inviting disaster. Owen is an Annapolis graduate and Vietnam veteran whose attitude towards life is decidedly out of step with his generation. He lives without ambiguity while feeling an incompleteness about the meaning of his own life. When through a fluke he has the opportunity to sail around the world in a competition, he sees it as a chance to prove himself even though he lacks the necessary sailing experience. A seriously flawed boat complicates his quest for redemption.

Owen's employer has hired Ron Strickland, a maker of documentaries, to film the competition. Originally Owen's boss was to compete, but he has vanished, leaving his financial empire in jeopardy. Strickland knows that in time all of his subjects give themselves away, revealing their pretensions and absurd values. His job is to document (and expose) their foibles. Strickland makes, as one character tells him, films about his attitude towards his subjects and not reflections about things as they are. Strickland sees his nihilism as a mark of his superiority and plots to discredit Owen and win over Anne.

At sea Owen encounters a level of existence that leads him to meet head on demons long buried within him. After surviving a devastating gale, he gains the freedom he has not afforded himself on land, and he must decide how to extricate himself from the consequences of his actions. What Owen does is best left unsaid here. Through the help of her father, Anne revenges her adultery with Strickland who underestimated her resolve to protect her husband from a film that would expose his duplicity. Stone knows how to capture inner rage even in characters whose life plan has been to keep it buried and silent.