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My Life with Pat Conroy
by Cassandra King Conroy
Bestselling author Cassandra King Conroy considers her life and the man she shared it with, paying tribute to her husband, Pat Conroy, the legendary figures of modern Southern literature.
Cassandra King was leading a quiet life as a professor, divorced "Sunday wife" of a preacher, and debut novelist when she met Pat Conroy.
Their friendship bloomed into a tentative, long-distance relationship. Pat and Cassandra ultimately married, partly because Pat hated the commute from coastal South Carolina to her native Alabama. It was a union that would last eighteen years, until the beloved literary icon's death from pancreatic cancer in 2016.
In this poignant, intimate memoir, the woman he called King Ray looks back at her love affair with a natural-born storyteller whose lust for life was fueled by a passion for literature, food, and the Carolina Lowcountry that was his home.
As she reflects on their relationship and the eighteen years they spent together, cut short by Pat's passing at seventy, Cassandra reveals how the marshlands of the South Carolina Lowcountry ultimately cast their spell on her, too, and how she came to understand the convivial, generous, funny, and wounded flesh-and-blood man beneath the legend—her husband, the original Prince of Tides.
"This engrossing tearjerker will appeal to fans of both King Conroy and her husband, and those inspired by literary romances." - Publishers Weekly
"Award-winning novelist Conroy's intimate memoir of her relationship with her late husband, fellow novelist Pat Conroy, is not to be missed...Much more than a memoir, this is a mesmerizing and captivating love story." - Booklist
"A chronicle of love, humor, and creativity...The author recounts in lively detail the stresses and joys of daily life: family gatherings, Pat's recurring health problems, and their mutual love of the South Carolina marshland. An ebullient portrait of a marriage." - Kirkus Reviews
"You'll read this touching memoir through tears of both laughter and sorrow. By turns lyrical and down-home, Cassandra King Conroy writes straight from the heart about the agony of loss, even while illuminating the joy of loving and being loved – timelessly." - Sandra Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outfox and Tailspin
"Who wouldn't want to know what it was like to be married to Pat Conroy, one of the greatest writers to ever spring forth from the Lowcountry of South Carolina? Cassandra, his widow, takes you inside their deep and abiding love in this beautifully and soulfully written memoir." - Dorothea Benton Frank, New York Times bestselling author
"Tell Me A Story is breathtakingly tender, heartbreakingly true...The best memoir I've read." - Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of The Beach House Reunion
This information about Tell Me a Story was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Cassandra King is an award winning and bestselling novelist whose fiction has won the hearts of readers everywhere, especially in the American south. Often told in first person, her novels portray strong and memorable characters who struggle with the same timely issues and dilemmas that readers face in their own lives. Before becoming an author, she has taught creative writing on the college level, conducted corporate writing seminars, and worked as a human interest reporter. The widow of acclaimed author Pat Conroy, Cassandra resides in Beaufort, South Carolina, where she is honorary chair of the Pat Conroy Literary Center.
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