I have waffled about how to rate this book, which is a long and winding saga of the Wingo family of South Carolina. Pat Conroy was inarguably a gifted writer, with a talent for bringing characters and settings to life with rich and verbose detail. What Conroy does not do is write concisely. After nearly six hundred pages with these characters, I'm sure you'll see what I mean. 

In short this is the story of three siblings who grew up in an abusive and volatile home who are now experiencing difficulty in adulthood stemming from their childhoods. Savannah is a successful poet living in NYC, but when she attempts suicide her twin brother Tom rushes to the rescue. He is contacted and prevented from visiting his sister by her psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom recounts the signficant events of his childhood to Lowenstein to help her know how to treat Savannah. The misconceptions of psychiatry aside, this is a compelling way to tell the story and the alternating chapters between the past and present do create a need to keep reading for more information. 

As this book is now 37 years old and the past chapters are set in the 1940s to 1960s in the South, it does read as dated. The n word appears often, but in the context of identified racism. The racism that stood out to me as unchallenged was towards Vietnamese and other AAPI groups. There is some mental health talk that was less than ideal, but let's be honest- that still exists frequently today. 

I guess I've been almost as long winded as Mr. Conroy to say this book was lovely in it's own ways but is a product of a progressive thinker from the South in the 1980s. It's not perfect, but I'm glad I read it.