Pat Conroy wrote a dozen books including The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini.
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Conroy died at his home Friday in Beaufort, South Carolina, surrounded by his loved ones, his publisher said.
With South Carolina as his canvas, Conroy penned bestselling books about the “Lowcountry”, and lived there for most of his life. It told the story of a former football player from with a traumatic past and the NY psychiatrist who attempts to help him.
“The water is wide and he has now passed over”, said his wife, novelist Cassandra King Conroy. Pat Conroy will be missed.
Conroy announced last month on his Facebook page that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
“The reason I write is to explain my life to myself”, Conroy said in a 1986 interview.
The Great Santini was also made into a film, starring Robert Duvall as a violent patriarch, based on Conroy’s father Donald, a marine aviator and military hero.
Conroy was born in Atlanta and his robust bibliography inspired memorable filmmaking.
Conroy’s rich and often autobiographical novels were frequently adapted for the screen.
Following graduation in 1967, he worked as a high school teacher in Beaufort.
Instead of a military career, Conroy became a teacher on isolated, impoverished Daufuskie Island, where many of his students were illiterate and direct descendants of slaves.
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Even his first book, a memoir called “The Water Is Wide” recounting his experience teaching underprivileged children in a rural one-room schoolhouse, was the basis for a 1974 movie called “Conrack” starring Jon Voight. “For 30 years he was all but barred from the campus”, the New York Times noted in a piece detailing Conroy’s reconciliation with his Citadel family.
