South of Broad is not a love story in the predictable unfolding of “boy and girl meet, love ensues, tragedy strikes, relationship is shattered (often due to some horrible misunderstanding), eventually they get back together …” South of Broad is altogether different – richer and better. There certainly are conventional male/female relationships woven throughout the story, but the book explores themes of love from all kinds of other perspectives as well.
More than anything else, South of Broad is a narrative about the enduring power of longtime friendship, and the lengths to which some friends will go to protect one another. Conroy also movingly depicts the redemption of a disappointing relationship between a boy and his mother, the ongoing tumultuous love between the same boy/man and the Catholic faith, a woman’s agonizing choice between marrying Christ or marrying the ordinary human man whom she loves, and the unconditional love of a father for his troubled son. The descriptions that Conroy does so well also amount to a love letter from the author to the city of Charleston. Conroy so elegantly describes a city of such incomparable beauty and character that I found myself tempted to move to Charleston. That is really saying something, as I consider myself a mid-Atlantic girl all the way.
Conroy’s writing is witty, graceful, and often hilarious. He creates characters who are so real, so true to life, that we grieve their loss when we come to the end of the book. I have never read a Conroy novel that I did not like, but this is one of his best. It is the most overtly spiritual of his books — he sees the Church with all of her flaws and is kind to her anyway. Without beating the reader over the head with it, he shows us how the Church continues to beckon us, to call us home even with all our anger, imperfections, and disbelief. Conroy seems to understand and validate the position of those of us who get frustrated with the church and our complicity with the world’s sin, but we love her/us anyway. As South of Broad’s protagonist, Leo King, describes his own rage and rebellion after his beloved brother’s suicide, he says that the family priest told him “that the church was patient and would be waiting for me when I was ready to return. It was, and he was.” Amen to that. Keep an eye on that priest, though. All is not as it seems, as South of Broad shows the church and her servants, warts and all.
As terrific a book as this is, it is not an “easy” read from an emotional perspective. Conroy is a master at showing the ugly pieces of life, and many of them are present in this narrative — classism, homophobia, pedophilia, and promiscuity, for example. The scenes in the AIDS flophouses of San Francisco are among the most graphic and wrenching I have ever read. Conroy’s true gift is pointing out the beauty that shimmers in the midst of all the ugliness and horror the world can dole out. The instances of grace and moments of truth are even more powerful against the backdrop of some of the worst human sin we can imagine. Against all odds, this is a lovely, lovely book.
LESLIE KLINGENSMITH is pastor of St. Matthew Church in Rockville, Md.
