South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for. The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar.
Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. I never thought he could match the success of Prince of Tides but with South of Broad I believe he has done just that.Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. He allows you to feel the atmosphere of the city, to the point that you can nearly smell the flowers or the fetid decay around you. Pat Conroy has a rare gift for describing time and place and character. This band of unlikely friends travels through 20 years together with all of the societal changes that occur. They ring true in the discomfort of integration of the South during the late 1960’s as well as the AIDS crisis of San Francisco during the 1980’s. These characters are three dimensional in their successes, failures, and privileged or impoverished pasts. They are joined by a pair of orphans, a soon to be movie star beauty, and a black football player. Narrated by the son of an ex-nun turned high school principal, Leopold Bloom King befriends a set of twins who are being raised by their alcoholic mother and living in fear of their murderous father. Set in the two most beautiful cities in the country, Charleston and San Francisco, this is a soulful tale of unlikely friends, who come together during their final year in high school and form a lifelong bond. RT GramG46133627: Florida & Texas are at the top of the list of states bnning the most books, followed by South Carolina, Missouri & Utah.
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