SOUTH OF BROAD by Pat Conroy

Publisher Doubleday, August 2009

At last Pat Conroy brings to his readers who are legion a novel of his beloved Charleston. This time the eighteen-year-old protagonist Leopold Bloom King—yes, his mother is an ardent Joyce scholar—meets six new classmates who will join the senior class of Peninsula High School and develop a deep friendship that will last the twenty years of this glorious novel. As Pat Conroy is not a writer to hold back on either adventure or the pleasure of language, we are taken from the beautiful city of Charleston and its many islands to the mountains of North Carolina, the glamour of Hollywood and the trolleyed streets of San Francisco. In pursuit of the beautiful star Sheba Poe and her twin brother Trevor is their many-aliases father, escaped from prison, bent on terror and destruction. And, by their association with the twins, Leo (also known as Toad), Niles and Starla Whitehead, Molly Huger and Chadworth Rutledge and his sister Fraser, and Ike and Susie Jefferson are also in danger.

For readers of The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, and Beach Music, August 2009 will be a month of great storytelling by America’s favorite storyteller.