If indeed "Moby Dick" is the finest American novel, it should therefore have conveyed all that needs to be said about tragedy at sea. Apparently, though, authors, agents and editors — and definitely readers — didn't get the message. Davy Jones's locker — hell, his whole library! — is overflowing with narratives about misfortune in the Deep, with more being published all the time.

The titles span fiction and nonfiction: "The Perfect Storm," "The Poseidon Adventure," (local author Robert G. Ballard's) "Discovery of the Titanic," "Dead Wake," one book called something like "Jaws," "In the Heart of the Sea," "The Deep," and dozens if not hundreds more. The subject eternally fascinates, frightens and fixates us.

And writers continue to find new threads and themes to explore, as though they washed ashore like pieces of the Pequot after a whale-tail thrashing. For instance, take a dive, so to speak, into "The Lost Boys of Montauk: A True Story of the Wind Blown, Four Men Who Vanish at Sea, and the Survivors They Left Behind," the new nonfiction title by veteran journalist/Long Island resident Amanda Fairbanks.

"The Lost Boys of Montauk" is the selection for the July edition of our "Read of The Day" book club, and Fairbanks will discuss the work virtually on Thursday.

In March of 1984, the commercial fishing boat Wind Blown left Montauk on a routine work voyage. Onboard were Captain Mike Stedman, the boat's owner and a father of three, along with two local young men and the blue-blood son of an affluent summer family. Stedman himself was "to the manor born" but rejected familial expectations and chose life as a fisherman.

About a week into the trip, the crew ran into a sudden and powerful nor'easter, and neither the boat nor the bodies of the fishermen were recovered.

As per the history of the genre, that concise capsule alone would pique the curiosity of readers and publishing houses — and it did. Fairbanks based her proposal on essentially that pitch.

"I definitely sold the proposal on a much more limited premise than how the book ended up," Fairbanks laughs. She's speaking hands-free while driving on a Long Island highway during a heavy afternoon storm. Good thing she's not at sea!

Fairbanks explains that, as a first-time author but long-time journalist — she's contributed to New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, the Atlantic, the San Francisco Chronicle and was a staff writer at the East Hampton Star — she went into the project the only way she knew how. But instead of talking with sources for concise newspaper or magazine stories, where space and time provide certain limitations, Fairbanks eventually pounded out over 100 extensive interviews. The more she learned about the crew members and their families, as well as the intricate dynamics of life in Montauk, the more the surface hook of a tragedy at sea became multi-layered and intricately compelling story.

"I knew exactly the constraints of newspaper and magazine reporting," she says, "and I ended up reporting two to three times what I needed. The structure of the book went through many different drafts. I was learning to tell a story in a different voice. I was used to a framework where every word counted but now I was getting to extrapolate a bit more."

Fairbanks uses her new narrative freedom beautifully. "The Lost Boys of Montauk" is an evocative, visual story that builds dramatically as it goes. Too, as a California native who settled with her husband and children in Sag Harbor, Fairbanks was learning as she worked about an area she's now literally a part of.

"It often seemed overwhelming," she says. "There were issues of socioeconomics and class divide in Montauk and what it meant to commercial fishing. And, of course, I was dealing with grief, loss and trauma — some of which was experienced peripherally but also through the direct survivors. Members of the community fishing fleet are still very haunted."

Following those threads revealed a network that had defined Montauk for a long time: the often-uneasy coexistence between the working folks who have lived there for generations as well as the uber-wealthy who regard the village and its beaches as a "summer place" to be enjoyed at their leisure.

But the personnel onboard the boat also typifies another reality. The young folks who find themselves on Montauk during summers  regardless of class or privilege often interact and develop friendships. Again, the personnel onboard the Wind Blown was divided between two men of privilege and two of the blue-collar villagers.

Exploring the respective histories of "the lost boys" led to another angle Fairbanks didn't necessarily anticipate. She says, "I learned about the elements of brotherhood between the fishermen as well as the bonds between fathers and sons and their expectations."

There's also a folklorist subtext to Montauk that borders on mysticism and embraces the superstitions of the sea and those who work its waters.

To that end, one of the haunting hooks of the book is why Stedman ever bought Wind Blown to begin with. He saw a photo of the vessel in a boats-for-sale publication and immediately fell in love with it. But even in the publication's image, it didn't seem constructed for the sort of deep-sea fishing work Stedman envisioned.

Despite protests from his wife and friends, he purchased it anyway, sailed it up from the Gulf of Mexico, and seemed stubbornly oblivious to its obvious structural inadequacies.

"This is one of the great mysteries of this story," Fairbanks says. "Captain Stedman was charming and charismatic and bridges the gap between the wealthy and the fishing class. What was it about this boat that he had to have despite all knowledge to the contrary and basic street smarts? His friends and family had bad feelings about the boat and second guesses but he could not be dissuaded."

If you go

Who: Author Amanda Fairbanks, author of "The Lost  Boys of Montauk: A True Story of the Wind Blown, Four Men Who Vanish at Sea, and the Survivors They Left Behind"

What: In virtual conversation in with Rick Koster for our July "Read of The Day" book club event in partnership with Bank Square Books

When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday

How much: Free

To register: wwwbanksquarebooks.com