In this powerful and intimate memoir, the beloved bestselling author of The Prince of Tides and his father, the inspiration for The Great Santini, find some common ground at long last.
Pat Conroys father, Donald Patrick Conroy, was a towering figure in his sons life. The Marine Corps fighter pilot was often brutal, cruel, and violent; as Pat says, I hated my father long before I knew there was an English word for hate. As the oldest of seven children who were dragged from military base to military base across the South, Pat bore witness to the toll his fathers behavior took on his siblings, and especially on his mother, Peg. She was Pats lifeline to a better worldthat of books and culture. But eventually, despite repeated confrontations with his father, Pat managed to claw his way toward a life he could have only imagined as a child.
Pats great success as a writer has always been intimately linked with the exploration of his family history. While the publication of The Great Santini brought Pat much acclaim, the rift it caused with his father brought even more attention. Their long-simmering conflict burst into the open, fracturing an already battered family. But as Pat tenderly chronicles here, even the oldest of wounds can heal. In the final years of Don Conroys life, he and his son reached a rapprochement of sorts. Quite unexpectedly, the Santini who had freely doled out physical abuse to his wife and children refocused his ire on those who had turned on Pat over the years. He defended his sons honor.
The Death of Santini is at once a heart-wrenching account of personal and family struggle and a poignant lesson in how the ties of blood can both strangle and offer succor. It is an act of reckoning, an exorcism of demons, but one whose ultimate conclusion is that love can soften even the meanest of men, lending significance to one of the most-often quoted lines from Pats bestselling novel The Prince of Tides: In families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.
Review
Praise for *The Death of Santini
"One doesnt have to have readThe Great Santinito know that Pat Conroy was deeply scarred by his childhood. It is the theme of his work and his life, from the love-hate relationship inThe Lords of Disciplineto broken Tom Wingo inThe Prince of Tidesto the mourning survivor Jack McCall inBeach Music*. In this memoir, Conroy unflinchingly reveals that his father, fighter pilot Donald Conroy, was actually much worse than the abusive Meechum in his novel. Telling the truth also forces the author to confront a number of difficult realizations about himself. I was born with a delusion in my soul that Ive fought a rearguard battle with my entire life, he writes. Though Im very much my mothers boy, it has pained me to admit the blood of Santini rushes hard and fast in my bloodstream. My mother gave me a poets sensibility; my fathers DNA assured me that I was always ready for a fight, and that I could ride into any fray as a field-tested lord of battle. Conroy lovingly describes his mother, whom he admits he idealized in*The Great Santini* and corrects for this book. Although his fathers fearsome persona never really changed, Conroy learned to forgive and even sympathize with his father, who would attend book signings with his son and good-naturedly satirize his own terrifying image. Less droll is the story of Conroys younger brother, Tom, who flung himself off a building in a suicidal fit of schizophrenia, and Conroys combative relationship with his sister, the poet Carol Conroy. Its an emotionally difficult journey that should lend fans of Conroys fiction an insightful back story to his richly imagined characters. The moving true story of an unforgiveable father and his unlikely redemption."Kirkus Reviews, starred review
About the Author
Pat Conroy is the author of ten previous books: The Boo, The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, My Losing Season, The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life, South of Broad, and My Reading Life. He lives in Beaufort, South Carolina.