The Great Santini

Pat Conroy

Bantam, 1987 - Fiction - 440 pages

Step into the powerhouse life of Bull Meecham. He's all Marine --- fighter pilot, king of the clouds, and absolute ruler of his family. Lillian is his wife -- beautiful, southern-bred, with a core of velvet steel. Without her cool head, her kids would be in real trouble. Ben is the oldest, a born athlete whose best never satisfies the big man. Ben's got to stand up, even fight back, against a father who doesn't give in -- not to his men, not to his wife, and certainly not to his son. Bull Meecham is undoubtedly Pat Conroy's most explosive character -- a man you should hate, but a man you will love.

"Robust and vivid... full of feeling." --- "Newsday"

"Stinging authenticity... a book that won't quit." -- "Atlanta Journal"

"A tender, raucous and often hilarious book." -- "Booklist"

"Conroy has captured a different slice of America in this funny, dramatic novel." -- "Richmond News -Leader"

Contents

• Section 1: 1
• Section 2: 10
• Section 3: 20

About the author

Pat Conroy is the pen name of Donald Patrick Conroy, who was born in Atlanta, Georgia on October 26, 1945. He received a B.A. in English from The Citadel in 1967. After teaching high school at his alma mater, he accepted a job teaching disadvantaged black children in a two-room schoolhouse on Daufuskie Island off the South Carolina coast. Many of the children were illiterate, unable even to write their own names. He taught them using oral history and geography lessons. His experience on Daufuskie Island formed the basis for his first successful memoir, The Water Is Wide, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award from the Cleveland Foundation and was made into the movie Conrack starring Jon Voight in 1976. His novels include Beach Music and South of Broad. Several of his novels were adapted into movies including The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and The Prince of Tides. He also wrote several works of non-fiction including The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes and Stories of My Life, My Reading Life, and The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son. He died of pancreatic cancer on March 4, 2016 at the age of 70.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Great Santini; Bantam books
• Author: Pat Conroy
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Bantam, 1987
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 5, 2008
• ISBN: 0553268929, 9780553268928
• Length: 440 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Sagas