Beach Music

Title: Beach Music

Author: Pat Conroy

Pages: 628

Genre: Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Jack McCall is an American writer living in Rome with his daughter Leah after his wife jumped from a bridge and then his in-laws sued for custody of his precious daughter.  For years he had refused and contact from anybody back home in South Carolina, but within a few days some old friends track him down in Venice and his previous sister-in-law finds him through a private investigator in Rome.  Between the two of them, they convince him to confront his past and return home.

My Review:  I wish that I could recall where I got this book recommendation (It was probably six or seven years ago so if it was you, fess up...).  Pat Conroy is known as a great storyteller and this book was more or less a collection of a ton of stories with the main plotline woven through.  For example, a smattering of the stories covered the following: life in Rome, multiple suicides (one hanging and one bridge jumper), a monk in hiding who killed a couple while making love, a priest who killed an orphan-master that was raping his sister by setting him on fire. a Palestinian terrorist operation as the protagonist is trying to catch a flight, Jack's mother suffers from Leukemia and he and his brothers spend lots of time at the hospital as she struggles through chemotherapy, lovers killed when a bomb explodes the plane they were in, stories of Jewish torture in Auschwitz, Poland, and Kironittska Ukraine, a group of friends that get stranded on a small boat in the ocean when they try and harpoon a manta ray as big as a house, the nesting rituals of the endangered loggerhead turtles, a schizophrenic abducts his mother with leukemia and hides her in a cabin in the woods, a politician running for the governership of South Carolina, a movie producer trying to produce a film about growing up in Waterford, South Carolina, a secret lover killed by an ax into his back, the wife taking revenge on the drunk father by tying him to a bed a setting him on fire, the Nazis despicable crimes against Jews, protests against the Viet Nam War, and many more.  I enjoyed the stories, but it took me a while to read because there was so much going on.

Disclaimer: There is language, death, and crimes that may make you shudder.