This novel has become one of the most beloved novels of modern time with over five million copies in print, it has earned Conroy an international reputation. Reviewers immediately acknowledged Conroy as a master storyteller and a poetic and gifted prose stylist. This book, too, was made into a feature film.Ĭonroy remarried and moved from Atlanta to Rome, where he began The Prince of Tides, which, when published in 1986, became his most successful book. The novel exposed the school's harsh military discipline, racism, and sexism. The Citadel became the subject of his next novel, The Lords of Discipline, published in 1980. This crisis resulted not only in his divorce, but the divorce of his parents his mother presented a copy of The Great Santini to the judge as "evidence" in divorce proceedings against his father. The publication of a book that so painfully exposed his family's secret brought Conroy a period of tremendous personal desolation. This autobiographical work, later made into a film starring Robert Duvall, explored the conflicts of the authors childhood, particularly his ambivalent love for an abusive and often dangerous father. The book won Conroy a humanitarian award from the National Education Association and was made into the feature film Conrack, starring Jon Voight.įollowing the birth of a daughter, the Conroys moved to Atlanta, where Pat wrote his novel, The Great Santini, published in 1976. Conroy evened the score by exposing the racism and appalling conditions his students endured with the publication of The Water is Wide in 1972. After a year, Conroy was fired for his unconventional teaching practices - such as his refusal to allow corporal punishment of his students - and for his personal differences with the school's administration. He then accepted a job teaching underprivileged children in a one-room schoolhouse on Daufuskie Island off the South Carolina shore. While still a student, he wrote and then published his first book, The Boo, a tribute to a beloved teacher.Īfter graduation, Conroy taught English in Beaufort, where he met and married a young woman with two children, a widow of the Vietnam War. Since his family had to move many times to different military bases around the South, Conroy changed schools frequently, finally attending the Citadel Military Academy in Charleston, South Carolina, upon his father's insistence.
His father was a violent and abusive man, a man whose biggest mistake, Conroy once said, was allowing a novelist to grow up in his home. Pat Conroy was born on October 26, 1945, in Atlanta, Georgia, to a young career military officer from Chicago and a Southern beauty from Alabama, whom Pat often credits for his love of language.
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