Hall was born in Colfax, Iowa, where he attended the local schools. Hall graduated from Grinnell College in 1910 and became a social worker in Boston, Massachusetts, while trying to establish himself as a writer and studying for a Master's degree from Harvard University.

Hall was on vacation in the United Kingdom in the summer of 1914, when World War I began. Posing as a Canadian, he enlisted in the British Army, serving in the Royal Fusiliers as a machine gunner during the Battle of Loos. He was discharged after his true nationality was discovered, and he returned to the United States and wrote his first book, Kitchener's Mob (1916), recounting his wartime experiences.

Returning to France, Hall joined the Lafayette Escadrille, a French-American flying corps, before the United States officially entered the war. Hall was awarded the Croix de Guerre with five palms and the Médaille Militaire. When the United States entered the war, Hall was made a Captain in the Army Air Service. There he met another American pilot, Charles Nordhoff. After being shot down, Hall spent the last months of the conflict as a German prisoner of war. He was awarded the French Légion d’Honneur and the American Distinguished Service Cross.

After the war, Hall spent much of his life on the island of Tahiti, where he and Nordhoff, who had also moved there, wrote a number of successful adventure books (including the Bounty trilogy), many of which were made into movies. In addition to the various Bounty films, other adaptations included The Hurricane (1937), which starred his nephew John Hall; Passage to Marseille (1944), featuring Humphrey Bogart; and Botany Bay (1953), with Alan Ladd.

In 1925, Hall married Sarah (Lala) Winchester, who was part-Polynesian. They had two children: the cinematographer Conrad Hall (1926—2003) and Nancy Hall-Rutgers (born 1930).

Hall died in Tahiti and is buried on the hillside property just above the modest wooden house he and Lala lived in for many years.

The Bounty trilogy, with Charles Nordhoff

• Mutiny on the Bounty (1932)
• Men Against the Sea (1934)
• Pitcairn's Island (1934)
• The Bounty Trilogy (illustrated by N. C. Wyeth) (1940)

Other works

• Kitchener's Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army (1916)
• High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France (1918)
• Faery Lands of the South Seas (with Nordhoff) (1920)
• Mid-Pacific (1928)
• Falcons of France (with Nordhoff) (1929) Nordhoff and Hall's account of their service in the famed Lafayette Escadrille during WWI
• The Friends (1939)
• Doctor Dogbody's Leg (1940)
• Under a Thatched Roof (essays) (1942)
• Lost Island (1944)
• The Far Lands (1950)
• My Island Home: An Autobiography (1952)
• "Sing: A Song of Sixpence" in 125 Years of the Atlantic, p. 303-313