He includes a portrait of his six siblings, his mother and the extended family of both his parents. Conroy’s current memoir, The Death of Santini, takes his readers (and fans) through the writing of The Great Santini, the making of the film version and his adult life with his father (on whom Bull Meecham of The Great Santini is based). I may have connected with this aspect of his novels as, in tenth grade, I lived in Conroy’s native South Carolina (but I was Northern-born). In his novels, Conroy struggles to come to terms with his real-life Marine fighter-pilot father and the South being Southern-born. I actually enjoyed the film version of The Great Santini before I realized who wrote the novel on which it was based. It is an act of reckoning, an exorcism of demons, but one whose ultimate conclusion is that love can conquer even the meanest of men.In tenth grade when I discovered Ernest Hemingway’s stripped down writing style, I stumbled upon contemporary author Pat Conroy. The Death of Santini is a heart-wrenching account of personal and family struggle, and a poignant lesson in how ties of blood can both strangle and offer succor. In the final years of his life, quite unexpectedly, Santini turned his ire on those who had turned on Pat over the years. But as Pat tenderly chronicles here, even the oldest of wounds can heal. Their long-simmering conflict burst into the open, fracturing an already battered family even further.

While the publication of The Great Santini brought Pat much attention, the public rift it caused with his father generated more attention still. Pat’s great success as a writer has always been intimately linked with his family life. She was his lifeline to a better world, the world of books and culture, and despite the serial confrontations with his father Pat managed to claw his way towards a life he hardly could have imagined as a child. As the oldest of seven children dragged from military base to military base across the South, Pat bore witness to the toll his father took on his siblings, and especially on his mother, Peg. The Marine Corps fighter pilot was often brutal, cruel, and violent. Pat Conroy’s father, Donald Patrick Conroy, was a towering figure in his son’s life. In this powerful and intimate memoir, the beloved #1 bestselling author of The Prince of Tides and his father, the inspiration for The Great Santini, find some common ground at long last.

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy