South Of Broad

The publishing event of the season The one and only Pat Conroy returns with abig sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston and tolifelong frie... » 

The publishing event of the season The one and only Pat Conroy returns with abig sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston and tolifelong friendship. Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston SouthCarolina South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. LeopoldBloom King our narrator is the son of an amiable loving father who teachesscience at the local high school. His mother an exnun is the high schoolprincipal and a wellknown Joyce scholar. After Leos older brother commitssuicide at the age of thirteen the family struggles with the shatteringeffects of his death and Leo lonely and isolated searches for something tosustain him. Eventually he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightlyknit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poeglamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prisonescapee fatherhardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead socialite MollyHuger and her boyfriend Chadworth Rutledge X and an everwidening circlewhose liaisons will ripple across two decadesfrom 1960s counterculture throughthe dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The ties among them endure for yearssurviving marriages happy and troubled unrequited loves and unspoken longingshardwon successes and devastating breakdowns and Charlestons dark legacy ofracism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings themto San Francisco is something no one is prepared for South of Broad is PatConroy at his finest a longawaited work from a great American writer whosepassion for life and language knows no bounds. From the Hardcover edition. «