Pat Conroy, a US novelist whose books included Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, died at the age of 70, his hometown newspaper reported.
Pat Conroy, a US novelist whose books included Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, died at the age of 70, his hometown newspaper reported.
Conroy, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just four weeks ago, died on Friday surrounded by family at his home in Beaufort in the state of South Carolina, the Beaufort Gazette reported on Thursday.
Conroy’s bruising childhood in the southern United States served as material for his novels.
His 1976 book, The Great Santini, was inspired by his own family and his overbearing father, an abusive and ultra-macho Marine fighter pilot. The book was turned into a 1979 movie starring Robert Duvall. Conroy later wrote about a reconciliation of sorts with his aging father in the 2013 memoir titled The Death of Santini.
His 1986 novel The Prince of Tides, about a troubled man who falls in love with his suicidal sister’s psychiatrist, was turned into a 1991 Hollywood movie starring Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand.
The movie received seven Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture and one for Conroy as the screenplay co-author.
Conroy used his time at The Citadel military college and the school’s problems with racial integration as inspiration for his 1980 novel Lords of Discipline.
That book resulted in Conroy being banned from campus, and triggered a war of words with the school that went on for years.
