"Check Out" South of Broad

South of Broad by Pat Conroy

Reviewed by Cathy S., Librarian

I argued with myself whether I should read Conroy’s latest novel before or wait until after my visit to Charleston, South Carolina in the heat of August this year. I’m glad I waited! Not that everyone has to have visited the Holy City in order to enjoy this deeply engrossing tale, but I could truly feel the heat, humidity and humanity of one of the most beautiful southern cities.

As in many of Pat Conroy’s previous novels, he spins a tale that can be very real but outrageous. How can such a disparate group of young people come together—and stay together—as lifelong friends, or as long as their lives last? How can they withstand—or inflict--such harsh, even cruel, event? Leo King, as a rising high school senior, is working his way through court-ordered community service, after having fought his way back from a mental breakdown after finding his 10-year-old beloved older brother dead by suicide. His parents, both educators and his mother a former Roman Catholic nun, loom large in Leo’s recovery and life journey, as do several of the adults whom he works with and for as a young adult.

Learning and living in Charleston, with friends from that most aristocratic and privileged South of Broad neighborhood, and friends new-found that summer before senior year—a pair of orphans, brother and sister twins, and the cocky son of the first African American football coach at Leo’s new public school (he was expelled from his Catholic High School), Leo finds his way into an unexpected senior year with changes, challenges and confrontations that unfold for all of them.

Conroy starts this tale in 1969, then takes us 20 years ahead to center the action in Leo and his friends’ adult lives. He shows us, and describes in sometimes eloquent prose, how the past has shaped their present and futures, and how the darkness follows them. Their journey together to San Francisco to find and bring home one of their group cements them forever. Against the backdrop of Hurricane Hugo in September, 1989, more than one crisis develops, tragedy strikes, and Leo finds—again—despair then resurrection out of the mystery of his brother’s long-ago death.

If there is something that doesn’t quite ring true, it is the way Conroy puts such mature insight into the younger Leo. But Conroy shapes amazing characters and shows us how the bonds of family and friendship are the strongest forces tearing us apart and holding us together—stronger even than hurricanes.

Reserve your copy of South of Broad from the Chester County Library System today! To learn more about Pat Conroy visit his website.