<DIV><DIV>If you&#8217;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.<BR><BR>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&#8217;t falling apart, he encounters freak storms. As his debts escalate, Vann begins to wonder if he is merely repeating his father&#8217;s dreams and failures at sea&#8212;which ended with his father&#8217;s suicide. At once a page-turning true story of adventure on the open ocean and an archetypal tale of one man&#8217;s attempt to overcome fate and realize his dream, <i>A Mile Down</i> is an unforgettable story of struggle and redemption by a writer at the top of his form.</DIV>