Some images in life are difficult to shake.

For Jay W. Jacobs, it was the conviction of a widow determined to protect her husband’s name.

In 1986, Jacobs was a trial lawyer tasked with defending the woman in court after her husband was involved in the worst recreational fishing boat accident in San Francisco’s long maritime history.

Five lives were lost that morning, including Janet Dowd’s husband, son and brother-in-law.

If that weren’t unbearable enough, Dowd then was hit with a lawsuit from the widow of a passenger that placed into question the judgment and navigable abilities of her deceased husband, Francis Dowd, the boat’s captain.

The first day Jacobs met with Dowd, he knew he was in the presence of an extraordinary woman bent on preserving her husband’s honor.

“She looked at me and said, ‘My husband was not a perfect man, but he was never careless and never negligent ever,’ ” Jacobs said. “She’s looking at me the same way your mother and father looked at you and mine did with me like, ‘Don’t make me have to tell you this again.’ ”

Dowd’s determination and the trial to defend her husband’s name stood out so much to Jacobs during his 35 years in law that he was compelled to write a book about the case.

After years of additional research, drafts and fine-tuning, “The Widow Wave” was released in September, the first book written by the author who now makes Coupeville his home.

After a recent book tour in San Francisco, Jacobs will appear 1:30-3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, at the Coupeville Library to talk about the case that significantly impacted his life and the book that his publisher, Quid Pro Books, describes as “a true courtroom drama of tragedy at sea.”

“I suppose the genesis of this was when people on occasion would ask, ‘What was your most interesting trial?’ And the answer to that was easy. It was this one,” Jacobs said.

“I never had another case with greater factual complexities, or the legal complexities as well. I certainly never had another client who was more emotionally invested in the outcome of the trial than this lady I was defending.”

Francis Dowd, his son and three other men left San Francisco Bay in darkness in Dowd’s 34-foot boat, the Aloha, bound for a day of salmon fishing not far offshore in the Pacific Ocean March 9, 1984, and never returned.

With no witnesses to the tragedy and no signs of the boat, theories over their demise ranged from being sunk by a rogue wave or a large piece of debris or being struck by a ship.

Jacobs’ case centered on the probability that a large, less-common wave known as a coincident wave took down Dowd’s boat, sending it to the sea bottom somewhere in the Bonita Channel.

These types of waves happen around more shallow environments, where rogue waves are a more deep-water phenomenon.

A coincident wave, though rare, occurs when nearly identical waves wrap around an islet or shallow bar and meet in phase, creating a destructive wave sometimes twice the height and with possibly quadruple the force.

Jacobs argued in court, using expert testimony, that this was the most probable of all the outcomes while Dowd’s boat traveled through the Bonita Channel several hundred feet offshore, not far from the massive shoal known as the Four Fathom Bank.

“Basically, it just vanished,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs dedicated the book to “the three strong women in my life,” referring to his wife, Marsha, mother, Elizabeth, and Janet Dowd, who passed away in 2011.

Jacobs and his wife, formerly a private investigator, retired to Whidbey Island about 10 years ago after spending more than three decades in San Francisco.

He called writing “The Widow Wave” a labor of love. He said people who’ve read the book tell him they like it for different reasons — some for the courtroom drama that unfolded, some for the science behind waves and the sea story, and others for the human story and courage of Janet Dowd and her fight to protect her husband’s name.

Jacobs called it the defining case of his career as he went up against a much more experienced lawyer reputed for winning big cases.

“He’d tried many million-dollar cases, and his reputation was that he didn’t defeat you, he just practically exterminated you in court,” Jacobs said.

“I had practiced for 10 years and I had never tried a big, big case. I thought, ‘God, my career’s going to get terminated, and far, far worse, I was going to devastate this woman’s life, and she put her faith in me.’

“Truly, her husband’s honor was sacred to her.”

Meet the author

Jay W. Jacobs, a retired San Francisco attorney, will be appearing 1:30-3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, at the Coupeville Library. Jacobs will talk about his first book, “The Widow Wave.” Book sales and signing will follow the program. The library is located at 788 NW Alexander St. The program is supported by Friends of Coupeville Library. For more information, call the library at 360-678-4911 or go to www.sno-isle.org