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

In this inspirational memoir, internationally bestselling author David Vann tells the true story of building his own sailing ship and of the disastrous voyage that ensues.

As a thirty-year-old tourist in Turkey, David Vann stumbles across the steel frame of a ninety-foot sailboat and decides to fulfill a long-buried dream: he will rebuild the boat. From friends, family, and credit cards, he borrows $150,000 to construct the ship and achieve his ambition.

However, when the Turkish builders take shameless advantage of him, eventually charging him over $500,000, Vann finds himself on the edge of financial ruin and decides to start a chartering business. Battling with construction nightmares, spiraling debts and freak storms, Vann begins to wonder if he is merely repeating his father’s failures at sea, and a career that led to tragedy.

At once a page-turning memoir of adventure on the open ocean and a tale of one man’s attempt to overcome fate and realise his dream, A Mile Down is an unforgettable story of struggle and redemption by a writer of rare power.

"You gaze entranced as his destiny unfolds...Vann pulls off the most gripping passage of sea-catastrophe writing I have read outside Conrad, a chest-tightening, concretely detailed, cold, sickening and cumulatively desperate depiction of life turning murderous." (Spectator)

"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 and Brave Enemies)

"Vann brings his undoubted storytelling skill to his own experiences...unflinching honesty...a terrific piece of writing from a brave and talented author." (Big Issue)

"An antidote to the usual run of escape-to-the-sun memoirs." (Financial Times)

"Rarely has a memoir combined such raw self-exposure with such ultimately consoling insight." (New Statesman)