The pirate Pegleg Josiah Johnson was said to have fathered children with women in every major city along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the most famous of which was New Orleans madame Matilda Gertrude Hildegarde Duchamp who went by Gertie.

The Descendants of the Pirate Pegleg Josiah Johnson traces the lives of Pegleg and Gertie's many descendants, beginning with their grandson Hairless Harlan Johnson, whose wife was mauled by a tiger.

After migrating from the swamplands of South Louisiana to Seattle and Olympia, Washington, Harlan's many children and grandchildren get together every summer at a resort on Orcas Island where all hell breaks loose as brothers and sisters learn anew how to love one another despite it all.

Get to know the crazy Johnson family from Hairless Harlan to Billy, the oldest who has never fit in, to Lizzy the dancer, to Larry the now New York citified artist whom everyone loves; to sensible Eva and her wife Helen; to Renae and Sally, the other lesbian couple in the family; and to Bryce the football player and history professor who tried to eat a hat.

The Descendants of the Pirate Pegleg Josiah Johnson is fiction as true to life as it is absurd, as realistic as it is comical.