A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea

If you've ever owned a sailboat or had a friend who did, you know how it begins: with a dream. You dream about the ship, and gradually the dream consumes you. Practical considerations lose all meaning ... until, inevitably, the dream morphs into a nightmare. David Vann is familiar with that nightmare. His begins in Turkey: a thirty-year-old tourist, he stumbles across the steel frame of a ninety-foot sailboat that cries out to be built. From friends, family, and credit cards, he borrows the 150,000 to construct the ship. The Turkish builders take shameless advantage of him, eventually charging him over 500,000. On the edge of financial ruin, Vann starts a chartering business. But, when some new part of the ship isn't falling apart, he encounters freak storms. As his debts escalate, Vann begins to wonder if he is merely repeating his father's dreams and failures at sea--which ended with his father's suicide. At once a page-turning true story of adventure on the open ocean and an archetypal tale of one man's attempt to overcome fate and realize his dream, A Mile Down is an unforgettable story of struggle and redemption by a writer at the top of his form.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 06/15/2005
ISBN: 9781560257103
Pages: 236
Weight: 0.56lbs
Size: 8.16h x 5.66w x 0.72d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2005 pg. 531
Library Journal 06/01/2005 pg. 144
Ingram Advance 07/01/2005 pg. 93