In "Ichthyology," a young boy watches his father spiral from divorce to suicide. The story is told obliquely, often through the boy's observations of his tropical fish, yet also reveals his father's last desperate moves, including quitting dentistry for commercial fishing in the Bering Sea. "Rhoda" goes back to the beginning of the father's second marriage and the boy's fascination with his stepmother, who has one partially closed eye. This eye becomes a metaphor for the adult world the boy can't yet see into, including sexuality and despair, which feel like the key initiating elements of the father's eventual suicide. "A Legend of Good Men" tells the story of the boy's life with his mother after his father's death through the series of men she dates. In "Sukkwan Island," an extraordinary novella, the father invites the boy home-steading for a year on a remote island in the southeastern Alaskan wilderness. As the situation spins out of control, the son witnesses his father's despair and takes matters into his own hands. In "Ketchikan," the boy is now thirty years old, searching for the origin of ruin. He tracks down Gloria, the woman his father first cheated with, and is left with the sense of "a world held in place, as it turned out, by nothing at all." Set in Fairbanks, where the author's father actually killed himself, "The Higher Blue" provides an epilogue to the collection.

大衛·範恩，1966年生於阿拉斯加阿留申群島，成長於凱奇坎島，畢業於斯坦福大學英文係，並獲得康奈爾大學創意寫作碩士。 他的第一部小說《一個自殺者的傳說》由於沒有文學經紀人願意嚮齣版社推薦而被擱置十二年。在此期間為瞭生活，他當瞭八年船長，還做過造船工作。最後他參加瞭格蕾絲·佩萊短篇小說奬並獲奬，該書纔於2007年由參與主辦該奬項的馬薩諸塞大學齣版社齣版。2010年，哈珀-柯林斯齣版社再版該書，獲得巨大成功，在國際上獲得十多個文學奬項，包括法國美第奇外國小說奬、西班牙第一文學最佳外國小說奬、加利福尼亞圖書奬、法國《快報》讀者奬等，並在11個國傢的40傢媒體入選“年度最佳圖書”名單。 在《一個自殺者的傳說》之後，大衛·範恩又相繼齣版《馴鹿島》、《塵土》和《公羊山》三部長篇小說。此外，他還齣版瞭迴憶錄《下沉一英裏》和反思美國校園槍擊案的紀實作品《人間末日》。大衛·範恩曾執教斯坦福大學、康奈爾大學、佛羅裏達州立大學和舊金山大學，目前是英國華威大學創意寫作教授。