Prince of Tides (1986) contained the ambient charm of South Carolina -- for WHITE readers -- his work provided me with regional and thus exotic description of place and time, particularly that of coastal SC.
I read intently his book describing his experiences teaching on an isolated Sea Island school of all black kids. {c&p from Wiki}:
The Water Is Wide is a 1972 memoir [1] by Pat Conroy and is based on his work as a teacher on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, which is called Yamacraw Island in the book. The book is sometimes identified as nonfiction[2] and other times identified as a novel.[3]
As this region of the U.S. is the cradle of secession and slavery is God's will by GAWD, it was particularly interesting he was very young then, and it was the Civil Rights and Vietnam era. I didn't read The Water is Wide though, until I had all that history about SC and the slavery of the coast and the Sea Islands rice plantations. Anyone who possesses this historical information sees Beaufort (site of what is known as "Secession House" the mansion built by Barnwell Rhett and his fire eating secessionist brothers; there's even an inscription they put on the basement walls that boasts, "in this house the first meeting of Secession was held") and the Sea Islands with very different eyes than do snow birding tourists,
I'm looking forward to being down there again at the end of May.
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