Leap Day

Rather than treat February 29th as just an additional day of winter and presidential campaigning, I converted the quadrennial calendar quirk into a treat for me. I used the extra day to read a book from start to finish. A rarity.

A Lowcountry Heart is a book both large enough in ideas and small enough in size that I could complete the task before evening dinner. The book is both by and about Pat Conroy, a tortured southern soul whose dysfunctional family and desperate college life provided subject matter for a half dozen popular and critically acclaimed novels he published before his death in 2016. The Prince of Tides is probably most famous of his fabulous work.

I had been unaware until now that Conroy started to blog in 2009.  He labeled “blog” the “ugliest word in the English language.”  So he referred to his postings as “letters” which he always began, “Hello, out there,” as if he were trying to communicate with space aliens.

An author who had never learned to type and had always created and composed by hand on a legal pad, Conroy was at first intimidated by this new medium. He said, “I’ve no idea what a blog is supposed to do or what it is supposed to consist of.”

But it didn’t take long for this irrepressible storyteller to find his groove. His “letters” tell the stories of people he had met in the past and of the relationships he continued to cultivate in the final chapter of his own life.

A Lowcountry Heart describes family, friends, teachers, coaches, teammates and especially writers, editors and agents, all made more memorable because of Conroy’s biting wit and love of language.

JER