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.
A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea
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Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
A harrowing—and heartbreaking—true story of one ordinary man’s misadventures at sea
"A Mile Down would be a cautionary tale for anyone who dreams of the freedom of the high seas—if only it wasn’t so damn exciting. . . ." —STEWART O'NAN, coauthor with Stephen King of Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season and author of The Night Country
"At once memoir, confession, travel book, and thriller, David Vann’s A Mile Down is so vivid and intense you will dread to see it end. . . . The book is a testimony of passion and courage in deadly storms and scarier calms, of a man wrestling with his ghosts and gifts in the very shadow of paradise." —ROBERT MORGAN, author of Gap Creek
"A Mile Down is pure adrenaline. Vann by all rights should have died at sea, and yet he’s lived to tell about it. But the thrill comes also from other kinds of risk—risk of repeating his father’s suicide, risk of financial disaster, risk of prosecution, risk of losing everything including who he believes himself to be. This story won’t let you go." —MELANIE THERNSTROM, author of The Dead Girl and Halfway Heaven
"A Mile Down is far more than a tale of ruin at sea. It’s also a story of desire and shame, of the struggle to escape our histories and know our dreams. Vann writes that ‘A life can be like a work of art, constantly melted away and reshaped,’ and he shows us this reshaping, this rebirth of hope from despair and ruin, so powerfully I couldn’t put the book down. You have to read this book, even if you care nothing about sailing or the sea. Just read it." —LALITA TADEMY, author of Cane River
"A Mile Down is a riveting and truthful account of a good man’s attempt to stay afloat on treacherous waters. This book reminded me of Robert Stone’s 'Outerbridge Reach,' or John Casey’s 'Spartina,' but in many ways Vann’s odyssey is more unforgettable. The fact that Vann lived to tell it is an achievement in itself." —TOM BARBASH, author of On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal
"A Mile Down is suberbly crafted. As in the great epics, the protagonist faces an unrelenting crush of disasters, bad luck, and ill will, yet picks himself up over and over to carry on. . . . David Vann has created a tale of hubris and endurance that is both exciting and beautifully written." —KEITH SCRIBNER, author of The Goodlife and Miracle Girl
"Riveting, heartbreaking, and redemptive . . . A Mile Down is a memoir as engaging as the most compelling of novels . . . This is an immensely moving and exciting book—it’s as if one of the heroes of A Perfect Storm had lived to write his memoirs." —JULIE HILDEN, author of 3 and The Bad Daughter
"A Mile Down is mandatory reading for anyone who’s ever flirted with thoughts of a life spent at sea." —A. MANETTE ANSAY, author of Vinegar Hill
About the Author
David Vann’s work has been published in The Atlantic Monthly and other magazines and has won numerous awards. He has taught at Stanford and Cornell and currently teaches Travel and Adventure Writing for a consortium of Oxford, Stanford, and Yale. He holds a U.S. Coast Guard 200-ton Master’s License and has sailed more than 40,000 miles offshore.
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More About the Author
David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, an international bestseller and winner of the 2010 Prix Medicis in France, the L'Express readers' prize in France, the Grace Paley Prize, and a California Book Award, has been on 29 "Best Books of the Year" lists in the US, UK, Ireland, Spain, France, and Australia, including The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. Vann was also shortlisted for The Sunday Times Short Story Award and longlisted for the Story Prize. His new novel, Caribou Island, set in his native Alaska, will be out January 18, 2011 from HarperCollins, and he has a nonfiction book about a school shooting coming out Sept 2011 (titled Last Day On Earth). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he is currently an Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco. www.davidvann.com
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Why do men go down to the sea in ships? The power of the ocean has long compelled men to go, hearing in the windy sea a siren offering the secrets of fame, sustenance, fortune, romance. Author David Vann went down to the sea to forge a career, to free himself forever from "the endless treadmill of middle-class labor." To accomplish his dream, Vann commissioned a sleek sailing ship in Turkey and sold educational charters to ancient ports in the Mediterranean Sea. He then embarked on a voyage so riddled with misfortune and danger it could only exist in another man's nightmares -- his ship is hopelessly flawed. But when his boat sinks, "A Mile Down" in the Caribbean, David Vann finds the key to a mystery that has haunted him for many years. "A Mile Down" is more than an adventure story; it is a memoir of discovery and reconciliation written to inspire even confirmed landlubbers. If you read only one book this summer, make that one book "A Mile Down."
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By K. Hug
Format:Paperback
Near the end of A Mile Down, an angry charter agent shouts, "I am ashamed of the name David Vann." By then, the reader has arrived at an understanding of Vann that causes the hateful shout to fall on deaf ears. David Vann's memoir puts the reader at his side for two years as he pursues his dream of owning and operating a 90-foot sailboat. From Vann's words and actions, the reader becomes acquainted with a dreamer and a doer. No one is more critical of Vann than Vann himself. Yet, time after time, friends and associates come to his aid, freely giving of time, talent, and money. It is the cumulative sound of these silent voices that drowns out the shout of the charter agent. David Vann is somebody . . . somebody whose dream can be embraced. His craft (the sailboat) goes a mile down in a freak storm, while his craft (as a writer) allows him to go a mile down to discover enough truth about himself to sail again.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By Mr. C. Doyle
Format:Paperback
This is a gripping tale of a dream turned to nightmare with blow by blow accounts of storms, disasters and rescue at sea. As a simple adventure tale it leaves little wanting which explains its popularity.
David's father was a dentist. Tired of looking at yellowing enamel, he built himself a fishing boat, things went wrong with the venture and he ended up taking his life. This happened when David was 13 and left its mark.
David goes to Turkey, falls in love with the idea of owning a huge fancy yacht and deludes himself into thinking he can make this work. But rationalization seems to be a major facet of David's character.
"I've always worked hard, but the idea of the working life has frightened me since childhood. I had nightmares of adults working hard and endlessly at tasks they did not enjoy so they could continue working hard and endlessly at tasks they did not enjoy. There was not purpose or end point. Work so you can keep working. It seemed a proposition that could easily end in suicide. I wanted to escape this. I wanted to free myself from the working world and have time to write. And I wanted adventure. Grendel could never free me, but this boat could."
You might think from this passage that he had some mind-numbing job as a clerk in a big store. But David was a professor of creative writing at Stamford University, who also owned a 48-foot boat on which he gave creative writing courses. In his internal mental dialogue, the rational side of his brain must be a pushover, especially if he can convince himself that taking on locally-built 90-foot steel yacht is somehow going to give him time to write (well it eventually did, but not till after it sank).
David is not only able to delude himself, he is clearly able to draw others into his schemes without having to work to hard at it:
"During these times a curious thing happened: without quite meaning to, I sold loans for the new boat. I was simply telling the story to people who asked, but the story became a kind of spiel as I learned that these people - sometimes even without my asking - were willing to lend me money."
The book goes quickly into everything that went wrong, the rip-offs the shoddy work, and the creation of a 90-foot vessel full of unseen inherent flaws. While this does not hurt the story, it is in a way a shame, because we do not explore enough of the dream. I had to go to David's website and see pictures of the boat before I got a real feel for that. The pictures, which should have been in the book, show you better than any of his descriptions why he fell in love. This vessel was, in its own way a magnificent-looking superyacht and if he could pull it off he would get it for the price of standard 50-footer. When you are a 35-year old dreamer, it would not be hard to fall in love with the idea of being the owner and captain of such a status symbol.
Clearly the work was shoddy, though probably to normal Turkish standards. None-the-less when you see the photos and figure this huge, good looking vessel cost him only $500 tho, he was not ripped off. All the problems he encountered were, one way or another of his own making. He compounds these by trying to push along with a faulty boat to keep to a schedule set by charter commitments. It does not help that he really didn't have any money to start with. The result is a disaster at sea when the hydraulic steering system (which he had not taken the time to inspect) comes detached and the rudder starts to fall apart.
The result was a hairy rescue in a storm, salvage and bankruptcy. This probably should have been the end of the tale, but the boat proved to be impossible to sell so the bankruptcy court reverts ownership to David and he tries again.
On the second attempt, he almost succeeds, he gets to Trinidad, refits and starts to charter, it is a happier section, he gets married, and things go well. In the final part disaster strikes again, the stern splits and the boat sinks. But while this plays out in the book as a freak storm and more bad luck, it is another disaster of his own making. He decides to take this 90-foot steel giant from Trinidad to the Virgin Islands with only his wife as crew. Now, this is not well built superyacht with every gadget, it is a boat that has been built to a corner-cutting budget, with problems, which has already nearly cost both his own life and that of his friends. Furthermore it does not even have an autopilot. Two people might, in optimum conditions, be able to handle it, but there is no margin for error or bad luck. Neither does he bring on board a couple of gallons of underwater epoxy, which, given the history of this boat, should have been an early purchase, He compounds this error of judgment by heading on a direct route, rather than following the islands where he would have had a chance to stop and rest, or get something fixed if needed.
The book is written well, interesting, a good read, and as an adventure story it deserves to succeed. But I only give it three stars because as literature it fails for lack of depth in dealing with the personalities involved. Even David (and the book is written in the first person) seems strangely absent at anything other than a superficial level.
The book ends on a cheerful note. David is building a big new trimaran to charter in the Virgin Islands with some new investors. (The setbacks have not cost him any of his powers of persuasion), but you almost fear for his safety and that of his friends. Has he really learned anything form his experiences? If so we do not get a feel for it here. Maybe if he survives to write the next book we will find out.
David's father was a dentist. Tired of looking at yellowing enamel, he built himself a fishing boat, things went wrong with the venture and he ended up taking his life. This happened when David was 13 and left its mark.
David goes to Turkey, falls in love with the idea of owning a huge fancy yacht and deludes himself into thinking he can make this work. But rationalization seems to be a major facet of David's character.
"I've always worked hard, but the idea of the working life has frightened me since childhood. I had nightmares of adults working hard and endlessly at tasks they did not enjoy so they could continue working hard and endlessly at tasks they did not enjoy. There was not purpose or end point. Work so you can keep working. It seemed a proposition that could easily end in suicide. I wanted to escape this. I wanted to free myself from the working world and have time to write. And I wanted adventure. Grendel could never free me, but this boat could."
You might think from this passage that he had some mind-numbing job as a clerk in a big store. But David was a professor of creative writing at Stamford University, who also owned a 48-foot boat on which he gave creative writing courses. In his internal mental dialogue, the rational side of his brain must be a pushover, especially if he can convince himself that taking on locally-built 90-foot steel yacht is somehow going to give him time to write (well it eventually did, but not till after it sank).
David is not only able to delude himself, he is clearly able to draw others into his schemes without having to work to hard at it:
"During these times a curious thing happened: without quite meaning to, I sold loans for the new boat. I was simply telling the story to people who asked, but the story became a kind of spiel as I learned that these people - sometimes even without my asking - were willing to lend me money."
The book goes quickly into everything that went wrong, the rip-offs the shoddy work, and the creation of a 90-foot vessel full of unseen inherent flaws. While this does not hurt the story, it is in a way a shame, because we do not explore enough of the dream. I had to go to David's website and see pictures of the boat before I got a real feel for that. The pictures, which should have been in the book, show you better than any of his descriptions why he fell in love. This vessel was, in its own way a magnificent-looking superyacht and if he could pull it off he would get it for the price of standard 50-footer. When you are a 35-year old dreamer, it would not be hard to fall in love with the idea of being the owner and captain of such a status symbol.
Clearly the work was shoddy, though probably to normal Turkish standards. None-the-less when you see the photos and figure this huge, good looking vessel cost him only $500 tho, he was not ripped off. All the problems he encountered were, one way or another of his own making. He compounds these by trying to push along with a faulty boat to keep to a schedule set by charter commitments. It does not help that he really didn't have any money to start with. The result is a disaster at sea when the hydraulic steering system (which he had not taken the time to inspect) comes detached and the rudder starts to fall apart.
The result was a hairy rescue in a storm, salvage and bankruptcy. This probably should have been the end of the tale, but the boat proved to be impossible to sell so the bankruptcy court reverts ownership to David and he tries again.
On the second attempt, he almost succeeds, he gets to Trinidad, refits and starts to charter, it is a happier section, he gets married, and things go well. In the final part disaster strikes again, the stern splits and the boat sinks. But while this plays out in the book as a freak storm and more bad luck, it is another disaster of his own making. He decides to take this 90-foot steel giant from Trinidad to the Virgin Islands with only his wife as crew. Now, this is not well built superyacht with every gadget, it is a boat that has been built to a corner-cutting budget, with problems, which has already nearly cost both his own life and that of his friends. Furthermore it does not even have an autopilot. Two people might, in optimum conditions, be able to handle it, but there is no margin for error or bad luck. Neither does he bring on board a couple of gallons of underwater epoxy, which, given the history of this boat, should have been an early purchase, He compounds this error of judgment by heading on a direct route, rather than following the islands where he would have had a chance to stop and rest, or get something fixed if needed.
The book is written well, interesting, a good read, and as an adventure story it deserves to succeed. But I only give it three stars because as literature it fails for lack of depth in dealing with the personalities involved. Even David (and the book is written in the first person) seems strangely absent at anything other than a superficial level.
The book ends on a cheerful note. David is building a big new trimaran to charter in the Virgin Islands with some new investors. (The setbacks have not cost him any of his powers of persuasion), but you almost fear for his safety and that of his friends. Has he really learned anything form his experiences? If so we do not get a feel for it here. Maybe if he survives to write the next book we will find out.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
This ass deserved it
The read is fun, mostly because it's nice to see a pompous little jerk get what's coming to him. You can't help but be annoyed by Vann's unfounded know-it-all attitude, how he... Read more
Published 2 months ago by A. Brewer
3.0 out of 5 stars
It's not my fault!
I read the previous reviews before buying this book, so I knew what I was getting into. Mr. C. Doyle and Mark Pittman sum it up pretty well. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Bob
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great read
A fascinating true story. I felt the author was a tad codependent the way he allowed himself to be conned by certain 3rd world nations' shipyards.
Published 4 months ago by William A. Cooper
5.0 out of 5 stars
Couldn't put it down
I loved this book. I thought it was very suspenseful, and shed light on human behavior that some would rather think didn't exist. I read it in 3 days and couldn't put it down.
Published 8 months ago by P. Hubbs
5.0 out of 5 stars
Job and Jonah Merged into One!
That's right. This one is a modern day Biblical epic, a Job meets Jonah, a memoir that is truly biblical in its scope, it its epicness, beyond anything the Greek were able to come... Read more
Published 15 months ago by C. E. Selby
2.0 out of 5 stars
Everything is everyone's fault but mine.
Read the book. Whatever merits the survival story had were quickly overshadowed by the blamefest that the author embarked upon. The Moroccans made a lousy boat. Read more
Published on April 2, 2011 by Yvette
3.0 out of 5 stars
In over his head from the start.
David Vann had me from the first page with his style of writing. As time wore on and his naivete with boat builders in Turkey set him up for future disaster I wanted to grab him... Read more
Published on March 22, 2011 by Edmund Tepas
3.0 out of 5 stars
Page turner, but a disastrous book
I really enjoyed this book. However, I put it aside for six months because the writing was really poor and was apparently unedited. Read more
Published on May 29, 2009 by Greg Becker
5.0 out of 5 stars
Couldn't put it down!
From start to finish I was immersed in this book. I too own a business and could relate to the hardship's he was experiencing. He's now one of my favorite author's.
Published on November 29, 2008 by Jordan M. Beegle
3.0 out of 5 stars
A lot of whining!
I don't know, guys. I read the hype for this book, bought it, and dove in with great expectations. Overall, it is well written but the author's agenda - to blame everyone and... Read more
Published on February 2, 2008 by David
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 10
books:
See all 10 books this book cites
- Gap Creek : The Story of a Marriage (Oprah's Book Club) by Robert Morgan in Front Matter
- Dead Girl by Melanie Thernstrom in Front Matter
- Cane River (Oprah's Book Club) by Lalita Tademy in Front Matter
- On Top of the World : Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal by Tom Barbash in Front Matter
- Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone in Front Matter
See all 10 books this book cites
