The Water Is Wide - Hardcover

This heartrending story of the difference one man can make became the basis for the first film based on a Pat Conroy work, the much-loved Conrack.

The Water is Wide

Yamacraw Island is nearly deserted. No one has paid much attention to it, nor to the few poor black families that live there. But this beautiful, haunting slip of land across the water from South Carolina is home to them, and they've lived off the bounty from the sea for generations.

But now their very existence is challenged. Industrial waste, pouring into the water from which they pull their catches, threatens the only vocation they've known. Unless they can learn a new way of life, they will surely perish. The Water is Wide is the true story of a young white schoolteacher -- a man who gave a year of his life to give an island and a people renewed hope. He becomes the teacher to their children, and teaches the adults of Yamacraw Island extraordinary lessons they didn't even know they needed to learn.

With a moving performance by Will Patton, Pat Conroy teaches us all about the triumph of the human spirit in the most desolate of circumstances.

“Reading PAT CONROY is like watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel.”
–Houston Chronicle

“A hell of a good story.”
–The New York Times