“Tell Me A Story is breathtakingly tender, heartbreakingly true…The best memoir I’ve read.” — Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of The Beach House Reunion Bestselling author Cassandra King Conroy considers her life and the man she shared it with, paying tribute to her husband, Pat Conroy, the legendary figure of modern Southern literature.Cassandra King was leading a quiet … legendary figure of modern Southern literature.
Cassandra King was leading a quiet life as a professor, divorced “Sunday wife” of a preacher, and debut novelist when she met Pat Conroy.
Their friendship bloomed into a tentative, long-distance relationship. Pat and Cassandra ultimately married, ending Pat’s long commutes from coastal South Carolina to her native Alabama. It was a union that would last eighteen years, until the beloved literary icon’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2016.
In this poignant, intimate memoir, the woman he called King Ray looks back at her love affair with a natural-born storyteller whose lust for life was fueled by a passion for literature, food, and the Carolina Lowcountry that was his home. As she reflects on their relationship and the eighteen years they spent together, cut short by Pat’s passing at seventy, Cassandra reveals how the marshlands of the South Carolina Lowcountry ultimately cast their spell on her, too, and how she came to understand the convivial, generous, funny, and wounded flesh-and-blood man beneath the legend—her husband, the original Prince of Tides.
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When was the last time you woke up at 5 a.m. to finish a book you didn’t want to end? The memoir TELL ME A STORY by Cassandra King, Pat Conroy’s widow (an accomplished writer herself), isn’t just for lovers of his work. Anyone who has lost a loved one to cancer or a prolonged illness will be weeping through tears of recognition. But there are so many LOL moments you’ll want to share, too. Few can compare to Pat Conroy as a writer. But it’s his generosity toward other writers and willingness to go beyond free editing advice and giving blurbs to showing up at their appearances to bring more people to the event that makes him a true stand out. It’s the perfect gift for the readers in your life!
Pat Conroy has been my favorite author since I read the first chapter of Prince of Tides. I was thrilled to meet him during two of his book tours and was able to meet Cassandra, his wife, at one of the tours. He gave the best talks about his books and had his readers laughing with him at some of his family stories. He also made us feel special because he talked to everyone while he was signing your book and inscribed it with something personal based on what you’d talked about. He would stay until every person in the signing line was gone and never seemed to be in a hurry when meeting his readers. When he died in 2016, the world lost a writer who had a mastery of words and experiences. His readers were sad at his passing and in this book, by his wife of 18 years, we learn more about him as a husband , father and friend.
This book is an intimate glimpse into Pat and Cassandra’s marriage and their love for each other. I cried while I read it but I’m also happy that he was able to leave behind such a wonderful legacy of stories about life in the lowcountry that he loved so much.
Absolutely a wonderful read. I enjoyed learning more about Pat Conroy. His life was amazing and his spirit inspirational. Mrs Conroy’s words and memories of her life with him are beautiful and unforgettable. This is a must read book!
Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy is a gift from the heart. Popular author, Cassandra King Conroy must have intuited that legions of her husband’s devotees wanted his wife to speak. Many of us had incorporated Pat Conroy into our lives. We were on an intimate level with the author who bared his soul through story, so when he died, we were blindsided. We hadn’t been given enough time to wrap our minds around a Conroyless world and were totally unprepared. So, Cassandra King Conroy stepped up. In the age- old tradition of a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner, she put her own grief aside and did for others in the only way Southerners know of: she told the entire story with endless detail and heartfelt panache. She gave us exactly what we wanted.
What strikes me about this memoir is its similarity in spirit to all things Pat Conroy wrote. Many of us heard Conroy explain the magic behind his writing by saying he wanted to explain his life to himself in hopes that readers would understand theirs. He unfurled his life on the pages in an artfully veiled manner, and it worked. In Tell Me a Story, Cassandra King Conroy removed the veil completely. With an honesty that can only be described as sheer bravery, she gave us the unvarnished truth, revealing the humanness of not only Pat, but of herself and those lucky enough to be a part of his orbit. The memoir is spellbinding, engaging, heart-tugging, and hilarious. Parts of it read like a madcap ride through a comedy of errors, for how best to describe a union forged later in life, replete with two cause and effect, complicated backstories seeking a semblance of harmony. And yet harmony was achieved, and that bird of a different feather soared. Cassandra King Conroy’s memoir is the construction of a life cobbled together by two world-class authors. It is deeply confessional and told in a voice you’ll never want to quit.