This book is an absolute gem. I love Pat Conroy, the author, but after reading this, I feel that the world needed him as a teacher. A powerfully moving book! ( )

One of the top 10 books I hve ever read! ( )

An autobiographical story of when Conroy was a teacher on an island in South Carolina that was more interested in baby sitting than teaching the students. He tries many times to broaden his students horizons and meets continual resistance. I enjoyed this book ( )

2587 The Water Is Wide, by Pat Conroy (read 3 Mar 1994) When I saw an item in the paper a few weeks ago that said President Clinton's favorite books were The Last of the Mohicans and The Prince of Tides, I heard for the first time of Pat Conroy. So I read this 1972 book by him. I found it on the fiction shelf at the library, but it is written as a narrative of the author's year teaching black kids on Yamacrow Island in Beaufort County, S. C. I can't find such an island on the map, so it might be fictionalized. This is quite a book, and shows a change is coming--as long ago as 1972. Conroy portrays himself as a typical racist in his youth, now cured. "Conrack" is the movie made from the book. ( )