Beach Music

Pat Conroy is without doubt America's favorite storyteller, a writer whoportrays the anguished truth of the human heart and the painful secrets offamilies in richly lyrical prose and unforgettable narratives. Now, in "BeachMusic," he tells of the dark memories that haunt generations, in a storythat spans South Carolina and Rome and reaches back into the unutterableterrors of the Holocaust.

"Beach Music" is about Jack McCall, an American living in Rome with hisyoung daughter, trying to find peace after the recent trauma of his wife'ssuicide. But his solitude is disturbed by the appearance of his sister-in-law, who begs him to return home, and of two school friends asking for his help intracking down another classmate who went underground as a Vietnam protester andnever resurfaced. These requests launch Jack on a journey that encompasses thepast and the present in both Europe and the American South, and that leads himto shocking--and ultimately liberating--truths.

Told with deep feeling and trademark Conroy humor, "Beach Music" ispowerful and compulsively readable. It is another masterpiece in the legendarylist of classics that his body of work has already become.

PAT CONROY is the author of five previous books: "The Boo," "The WaterIs Wide," "The Great Santini," "The Lords of Discipline," and "The Prince of Tides," the last four of which were made into featurefilms.