The Water is Wide

The Water is Wide (1972) by Pat Conroy. His year spent as a teacher on remote Yamacraw Island is the subject of this memoir by the immensely talented Conroy. The children, and most of the population of the island -- located off the shore of South Carolina -- are African-American. Or, as Conroy puts it in this book, they are black. He went into the teaching job in 1969 with starry-eyed optimism, having failed to get accepted by the Peace Corps, and hoping to do some good. This book is a spirited account of how he strove to teach the neglected kids of Yamacraw Island how to read and do arithmetic, and of how he had to battle the authorities along the way. It's an excellent read, and has many amusing moments included among the dramatic accounts of trying to teach in a backward school system. Grade: B+