The Higher Blue

A son parses the fleeting gestures and fatal unraveling of his father across the stark terrain of Alaska.

In semiautobiographical stories set largely in David Vann's native Alaska, Legend of a Suicide follows Roy Fenn from his birth on an island at the edge of the Bering Sea to his return thirty years later to confront the turbulent emotions and complex legacy of his father's suicide.

Vann reconstructs these disjointed domestic encounters across unfurnished rooms and northern cold, observing a faltering dentist who masks financial panic and divorce behind impulsive culinary schemes.

The collection anchors Roy's recollections in stark physical realities, contrasting a kitchen on a paper-birch ridge with the solitary granite marker planted in seaside wild grass.
Unreliable Narrator: Roy invents harrowing hunting encounters with wild boars and leaping bucks to comfort his father during an anxious shopping trip for a gold choker.Family Life: A mother hands her ex-husband a can opener on the day of their divorce, having watched the helpless student she nicknamed Honey drift into infidelity.Coming of Age: Amid the absurdity of his father strapping into an Oshman's display hang glider.Also by This Author: Caribou Island, Goat Mountain and Dirt.