Book Description

South of Broad: Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of 13, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds.

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Compare prices and offers of "South of Broad" (Author: Pat Conroy)
Product Title / FormatList PriceBest PriceDiscountUpdated atShop
South of Broad (Unabridged) (iTunes Audiobook) $23.95 - - (as of 2010-07-26 5:36 PDT)Download on iTunes
South of Broad (Hardcover) $29.95$5.5081.6% Off(as of 2010-07-26 12:55 PDT)Buy from Amazon.com
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South of Broad (Unabridged) (Digital Download) £33.51£23.4929.9% Off(as of 2010-04-01 0:00 PDT)Buy from Audible UK
South of Broad (Hardcover) $17.00 - - (as of 2010-07-26 5:36 PDT)Buy from Walmart
South of Broad (Hardcover) $29.95$21.5628% Off(as of 2010-07-21 3:43 PDT)Buy from Barnes & Noble
South of Broad (eBook / 9780385532143) - $8.4 - (as of 2010-07-21 3:43 PDT)Buy from Barnes & Noble
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South of Broad (Unabridged) (AudibleListener® Gold Promotion / BK_RAND_001924-) $45.00 $7.4983.4% Off(as of 2010-07-21 0:00 PDT)Buy from Audible.com

Product Details, Customer Reviews and Ratings

  • South of Broad (Unabridged) - iTunes Audiobook

    Price
    $23.95 Download on iTunes
    (as of 2010-07-26 5:36 PDT)
    Rating
    4.5 (37 reviews)
    Publisher
    Random House Audio
    Shop
    Apple iTunes Store
    Format
    iTunes Audiobook
    Publish Date
    Aug 11, 2009
    Sales Rank
    127
    Length
    20 hours 2 minutes
    Narrator
    Mark Deakins Preview
    Presented by
    Audible.com

    Product Description / Editorial Review

    Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of 13, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. — Source: Apple iTunes Store

    Customer Reviews

    I enjoyed it!

    I really enjoyed this book and actually started reading it as I was passing through South Carolina. Love the history and the pictures of Charleston that Conroy paints in your mind. There were some times throughout the book that I thought the main character was a bit too good to believe. Some very interesting plot twists and turns and overall it kept me wanting to keep listening.

    Rating: 4
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by dizzyisme, 2010-06-15

    Too many plot lines

    The first half of this book was fabulous!! Takes place when all the characters were in high school and how the different classes and prejudices of the time affected them. Flash forward 10 or 20 years to a different time and a completely different story. Flash back to high school days. Flash forward to hurricane Hugo. This book has too many plots and it seems that Pat Conroy wanted to get in every possible thing that Charleston is known for. It was ok, I'm glad I read it but won't read it again.

    Rating: 3
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by Georgiab08, 2010-06-09

    South of Broad

    Loved it! I laughed, cried, shreiked in surprise...so many twists and turns in the lives of the characters. Some parts a little corny, but it distracted from the intense sadness of some of the stories. Thinking about listening to in again-something I never do!

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by Evie in AK, 2010-05-06

    South of Broad - Pat Conroy

    Great story, great narration, loved it! Every time I had to stop, I could not wait to get back to it.

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by MCT28, 2010-04-21

    South of Broad

    Great story set in a great city! Highly recommend!

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by Amp rocks, 2010-02-11

    Loved it!

    Just as others have written I did not want the story to end. I laughed, cried, felt anger and sorrow all from one book. I truly recommend.

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by Reader for Life...., 2010-01-15

    Well Done

    Outstanding.....The word pictures by the author made able to see, feel and hear everything. Perfertly woven metaphors.....

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by Mtn_Blue, 2010-01-01

    South of Broad

    Very mixed book. Conroy's writing is so lovely, so skillful. I was thrilled to finally have him back again. The first half is a must read for any Conroy fan just to experience how glorious is his writing. But this novel takes a dark turn that was like a spit in the soup for me. And frankly, I feel like a rat ever saying anything bad about such a gifted writer, but reader beware.

    Rating: 3
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by Stax Fan, 2009-12-23

    South of Broad

    this is my first Pat Conroy book and I cannot wait to listen to another. I could not stop listening. I loved it! I would highly recommend this audiobook. The narrator is amazing as he brings each of the characters to life. A must read!

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by jumck, 2009-12-04

    South of Broad

    I love this book. I am a Pat Conroy fan but this is my first audiobook of his and the audio adds a great dimension.

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad (Unabridged) review by Lazy Lizzie, 2009-11-04

    South of Broad (Unabridged) book cover
  • South of Broad - Hardcover

    Price
    $29.95 $5.50 (82% Off) Buy from Amazon.com
    (as of 2010-07-26 12:55 PDT)
    Rating
    3.5 (779 reviews)
    Publisher
    Nan A. Talese
    Shop
    Amazon
    Format
    Hardcover
    Publish Date
    Aug 11, 2009
    Sales Rank
    4329
    ISBN
    038541305X
    ISBN-13
    9780385413053
    Edition
    Stated First Edition
    Pages
    528
    Search best deal and alternate versions of "South of Broad" in US (United States), UK (United Kingdom) and CA (Canada)
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    • South of Broad: A Novel (Paperback)
    • South of Broad (Random House Large Print) (Paperback)
    • South of Broad: A Novel (Kindle Edition)
    • South of Broad (Audio CD)

    Product Description / Editorial Review

    The publishing event of the season: The one and only Pat Conroy returns, with a big, sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston and to lifelong friendship.

    Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

    The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for. South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. — Source: Amazon

    Customer Reviews

    Author, knitter, designer

    Riveting, well-balanced, skillfully written. I believe Conroy has hit perfection.
    Thank you Mr.Conroy!

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad review by Soulful, 2010-07-25

    South of Broad: A Novel by Pat Conroy

    I could not put it down. It is so wonderful to see something from Mr. Conroy again. He is a wonderful writer; his verbal paintbrush is magnificent!

    Thank you for a terrific read!

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad review by Renee A. Paschal, 2010-07-23

    Unbelievably talented author!

    There is no one else on Earth who has such a command and mastery of the English language as Pat Conroy. He could make watching grass grow or watching paint dry an emotional experience! Just the greatest author ever, and I've read almost as much as he has! Love you, Mr. Conroy!

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad review by Lyn Morris, 2010-07-23

    The Next Act in a Literary Life

    Although Fitzgerald stated "There are no second acts in American Lives" his last literary work shows his own focus changing from the crash of young lives over-weighted by money, mistakes and their own potential. Without losing his lyrical prose, he dared to imagine a protagonist different than the previous ones modeled on his own character. This was a tricky process and he died before the work was complete but if efforts count, Fitzgerald lived long enough to start the second act he thought could not exist.

    Pat Conroy's South of Broad may be the beginning of his own second act in the career of fiction and he risked his readership in writing this novel. Those familiar with his work are aware of his luminous prose, his focus on the American South and the need to forgive damage inflicted by those closest to you. The lush sentences and southern scenes are still here but, at the risk of his readership, Mr. Conroy has modified the theme of betrayal that dominated his earlier novels.

    Instead of an belittling father, the protagonist, Leo King, is raised by a man as gentle and decent as any abused child could wish for. His mother is emotionally cold but she is a woman unable to express feelings well, instead of a lying narcissist. When Leo starts to make friends, the communal friendship supports his comrades and the evil they encounter were created by hands other than their own.

    Gone too is the central character who has the luxury of youth. As Mr. Conroy has aged, the heroes of his novels have grown up and Leo tells his story from the beginning of his fifth decade. This is a man old enough to regret missed changes and mistaken choices.. Compared to earlier protagonists, Leo is more comfortable in his own skin, holds fewer resentments and shows less need to dominate every conversation. While he shares the ability of conversational fencing that make Luke Wingo and Jackson Hagood famous, Leo uses the skill when it is needed, not at the drop of every verbal cue.

    These changes are subtle and can best be seen in line with the author's previous work. However, they are an indication Mr. Conroy is trying to challenge his successful formula and create something new, which requires nerve. Perhaps in future literature classes, South of Broad can be studied as the beginning of Pat Conroy's next act. If so, let's hope the play continues to run for decades.

    Rating: 4
    South of Broad review by Leslie L. Golden, 2010-07-23

    Tad Melodramatic...

    The story is set in Charleston in the late 60's through the 1990's. It is centered on Leo King. Leo, 18 years old at the time, finds his older brother's body after he commits suicide. In coping with this tragedy, Leo enters years of therapy and in time finds solace and comfort from new friends. The book, like all of Conroy's books is beautifully written and especially so with the detail on Charleston and the environment. It is entertaining and a page turner.

    If I had any criticisms of the book, I found it contrived and melodramic in far too many sections stretching believability and credibility of the characters and the story line - - including dramas involving race relations, family, religion, upper/lower classes, infidelity, etc etc. If you are new to Pat Conroy, try "The Great Santini", "The Prince of Tides" or "The Lords of Discipline" - which I think are superior works when compared to this book.

    Rating: 3
    South of Broad review by D. Kanigan, 2010-07-22

    South of Broad book cover
  • South of Broad (Unabridged) - Digital Download

    Price
    £33.51 £23.49 (30% Off) Buy from Audible UK
    (as of 2010-04-01 0:00 PDT)
    Publisher
    Random House Audio
    Shop
    Audible UK
    Format
    Digital Download
    Publish Date
    Aug 11, 2009
    ISBN-13
    9780739382943

    Product Description / Editorial Review

    Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints.... — Source: Audible UK

    South of Broad (Unabridged) book cover
  • South of Broad - Hardcover

    Price
    $17.00 Buy from Walmart
    (as of 2010-07-26 5:36 PDT)
    Publisher
    Random House Inc
    Shop
    Walmart
    Format
    Hardcover
    Publish Date
    Aug 2009
    ISBN
    038541305X
    ISBN-13
    9780385413053
    Pages
    514
    Shipping Weight (in pounds)
    1.91
    Product in Inches (L x W x H)
    6.6 x 1.3 x 9.38

    Product Description / Editorial Review

    The one and only Pat Conroy returns with a big, sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston, South Carolina, and to lifelong friendship--a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. — Source: Walmart

    South of Broad book cover
  • South of Broad - Hardcover

    Price
    $29.95 $21.56 (28% Off) Buy from Barnes & Noble
    (as of 2010-07-21 3:43 PDT)
    Rating
    4.0 (432 reviews)
    Publisher
    Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Shop
    Barnes & Noble
    Format
    Hardcover
    Publish Date
    Aug 2009
    Sales Rank
    4059
    ISBN
    038541305X
    ISBN-13
    9780385413053
    Pages
    528
    Alternate Versions

    Biography

    Pat Conroy's novels are populated with domineering fathers, Southern belles of steel, and inexorable tragedy; all are elements the author is familiar with from his own life, and he has drawn on them to create unforgettable books. He is sometimes accused of florid prose, but he never fails to draw attention -- and readers -- with his passionate stories.

    Library Journal

    "Kids, I'm teaching you to tell a story. It's the most important lesson you'll ever learn," says the protagonist of Conroy's first novel in 14 years (since 1995's Beach Music). Switching between the 1960s and the 1980s, the narrative follows a group of friends whose relationship began in Charleston, SC. The narrator is Leopold Bloom King (his mother was a Joyce scholar), a likable but troubled kid who goes from having one best friend, his brother, to having no friends after a tragedy, to having, suddenly, a gang, of which he is perhaps not the leader but certainly the glue. Conroy continues to demonstrate his skill at presenting the beauty and the ugliness of the South, holding both up for inspection and, at times, admiration. He has not lost his touch for writing stories that are impossible to put down; the fast pace and shifting settings grip the reader even as the story occasionally veers toward the unbelievable. VERDICT Filled with the lyrical, funny, poignant language that is Conroy's birthright, this is a work Conroy fans will love. Libraries should buy multiple copies.—Amy Watts, Univ. of Georgia Lib., Athens

    Publishers Weekly

    Charleston, S.C., gossip columnist Leopold Bloom King narrates a paean to his hometown and friends in Conroy's first novel in 14 years. In the late '60s and after his brother commits suicide, then 18-year-old Leo befriends a cross-section of the city's inhabitants: scions of Charleston aristocracy; Appalachian orphans; a black football coach's son; and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are evading their psychotic father. The story alternates between 1969, the glorious year Leo's coterie stormed Charleston's social, sexual and racial barricades, and 1989, when Sheba, now a movie star, enlists them to find her missing gay brother in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Too often the not-so-witty repartee and the narrator's awed voice (he is very fond of superlatives) overwhelm the stories surrounding the group's love affairs and their struggles to protect one another from dangerous pasts. Some characters are tragically lost to the riptides of love and obsession, while others emerge from the frothy waters of sentimentality and nostalgia as exhausted as most readers are likely to be. Fans of Conroy's florid prose and earnest melodramas are in for a treat. (Aug.)

    Synopsis

    The publishing event of the season: The one and only Pat Conroy returns, with a big, sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston and to lifelong friendship.

    Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

    The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for. South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds.

    The Barnes & Noble Review

    It's been 14 years between novels for Pat Conroy, a son of the South whose love of his native landscape is matched only by his obsession with the grim strength of family ties. Much of that darkness rises from experiences in his own life. He mined his explosive relationship with his father, a severe and controlling ex-Marine, for his debut novel, The Great Santini. He followed up with The Lords of Discipline, which scandalized his alma mater, The Citadel, with its unflattering portrayal. With The Prince of Tides, a bestselling novel turned A-list movie with Barbra Streisand, he cemented his spot in popular culture.

    Conroy's back on familiar turf with South of Broad, which, depending on the eye of the beholder, is either a sprawling saga brimful of characters and emotion and sense of place, or a period melodrama with a pretty travelogue thrown in.

    Litmus test:

    "I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like a hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness every day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic."

    That's Leopold Bloom King, the narrator of South of Broad, named for the hero of James Joyce's Ulysses. Leo's a sweet, messed-up kid who, at 18 years old, already has a felony drug bust and a stint in a mental ward on his résumé. We meet him on June 16th, known to Joyceans as Bloomsday, the 24-hour span during which the author's famously impregnable novel takes place. The year is 1969, a tipping point for the civil rights movement and the coming countercultural revolution. Both will rock Leo's staid and stately hometown of Charleston.

    Leo's troubles began a decade before, the day he discovered the dead body of his charismatic ten-year old brother, Steve, a bloody suicide. The shock all but destroyed the King family. Leo's mother, a high school principal and a perfectionist, retreated into a frosty reserve. His father, a science teacher, struggled to fill the resulting gap. Leo himself went into a prolonged freefall. As we meet him on this Bloomsday, the lonely boy with the outlandish name is about to break free of the string of shrinks and probation officers who have marked his adolescence.

    "Because I was a timid boy, I grew fearful and knew deep in my heart the world was out to get me," Leo tells us in the first chapter. "Before the summer of my senior year, the real life I was always meant to lead lay coiled and ready to spring in the hot Charleston days that followed."

    That real life is set in motion as Leo reaches out, all in a single day, to an oddball collection of kids. There's Niles and Starla, a pair of runaways who, when Leo meets them, are dressed in bright orange jumpsuits and handcuffed to their chairs at St. Jude's Orphanage. Next, Leo bakes cookies to welcome the mysterious and seductive twins Trevor and Sheba Poe, who move in across the street. And at lunch at the country club Leo is recruited to help Chad, Fraser, and (Joyce alert!) Molly, society kids caught using drugs, learn the ropes at their new school. Add in a phone call from a nun, which reveals to Leo a stunning secret about his parents' marriage, and it's been almost as eventful a day as Leopold and Stephen's.

    All this makes for fast start and a dense read. Just three weeks later, as we're still sorting out who's who and what's what, Conroy shunts the whole gang 20 years into the future. It's 1989, and Leo's now a gossip columnist for Charleston's local newspaper. The ragtag group he assembled has become the core social force in his life. Bonds have formed. Marriages have taken place. Children have been born. When Trevor, one of the glamorous Poe twins, goes missing in his adopted city of San Francisco, the whole gang heads off to California to save him.

    The scope of the story blows wide open, and Conroy dives into the themes and characters that, from book to book to book, have a hold -- or stranglehold -- on him. There's physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, racism and class warfare, stalking and rape and murder, and, in the revelations about Steve's suicide, some very dark and rather familiar ground.

    There's also, amid a hefty bit of overwriting, some truly lovely stuff. Here Leo, the southern boy, nails California in two short sentences:

    "The West is both a great thirst and a dry, weatherless curiosity. In California, the mad, deep breath of deserts is never far away."

    It's Conroy's trademark prose, cinematic and sensitive. It makes you wish he'd stop swinging for the fences all the time, stop loading every last clause of nearly every sentence with so much stuff.

    In the end, though, when the drama has played out and the spectacle skids to a stop, when Leo and his friends return to their lives in Charleston, South of Broad turns out to be about love and acceptance, understanding, and that thing Conroy seems to seek most of all, forgiveness. --Veronique de Turenne

    Veronique de Turenne is a Los Angeles–based journalist, essayist, and playwright. Her literary criticism appears on NPR and in major American newspapers. One of the highlights of her career was interviewing Vin Scully in his broadcast booth at Dodger Stadium, then receiving a handwritten thank-you note from him a few days later.

    The Washington Post - Chris Bohjalian

    South of Broad is a big sweeping novel of friendship and marriageand, perhaps, vintage Pat Conroy…Conroy is an immensely gifted stylist, and there are passages in the novel that are lush and beautiful and precise. No one can describe a tide or a sunset with his lyricism and exactitude. My sense is that the millions of readers who cherish Conroy's work won't be at all disappointedand nor will anyone who owns stock in Kleenex.


    Source: Barnes & Noble

    Customer Reviews

    Captures the Deep South at it's Best and at it's Worst

    South of Broad captures the essence of Charleston, Savannah, and other southern cities with their defined classes. Conroy is gifted with his words as he makes us feel like we are there through his use imagery, feeling, and universal human experiences.

    Rating: 5
    South of Broad review by Lifelongvoyager, 2010-07-18

    In this book Pat Conroy writes with a crow bar-----

    Turning over every rock to expose every unthinkable human corruption and vice. What a nasty man. I read Prince of Tides years ago, and I cannot remember it being offensive. Do people really talk this way? If so, no wonder I have a feeling of uneasiness around homosexuals. If heterosexuals used every conversation to insert salacious comments about their sexual activities they would well deserve a little shunning. I finished the book though, so it must have held my interest. Bad on me.

    Rating: 2
    South of Broad review by sofispa, 2010-07-03

    South of Broad book cover
  • South of Broad (Unabridged) - Digital Download

    Price
    $45.00 $31.50 (30% Off) Buy from Audible.com
    (as of 2010-07-21 0:00 PDT)
    Publisher
    Random House Audio
    Shop
    Audible
    Format
    Digital Download
    Publish Date
    Jul 28, 2009
    Length
    20 hours 1 minute
    Narrator
    Mark Deakins
    Preview
    mwprealmp3
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    Sign up AudibleListener® Gold and Download South of Broad (Unabridged) for Special Offer Price: $7.49

    Product Description / Editorial Review

    Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of 13, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. — Source: Audible

    South of Broad (Unabridged) book cover
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The Prince of Tides
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