I love Pat Conroy. If I was having a fantasy dinner party with anyone in the world, he would be on my list. Right up there with Tina Fey, Julia Child, Frida Kahlo, and John Stewart. Now that would be a fun party.

I just finished his memoir, “The Water is Wide”. It is about about the year he spent teaching on Daufuskie Island, off the coast of South Carolina. In Conroy’s early twenties, he considered joining the Peace Corps, wanting to make a difference in the world. He was teaching at a high school at the time and the idea came to him to do his outreach closer to home. He heard about the terrible conditions in this remote, poor, predominately African American island school and decided that he could make a real difference there.

When he got to the school, he met with his class of 10-13 year olds and was appalled by the lack of education that the children had received. At the end of his first day, he had accumulated the following information about the children.

“Seven of my students could not recite the alphabet. Three children could not spell their names. Eighteen children thought Savannah, Georgia, was the largest city in the world. Savannah was the only city any of the kids could name. Eighteen children had never seen a hill- eighteen children had never heard the words integration and segregation. Four children could not add two plus two. Eighteen children did not know we were fighting a war in Southeast Asia. Of course, eighteen children had never heard of Asia. One child was positive that John Kennedy was the first President of the United States. Seventeen children agreed with that child. Eighteen children concurred with the pre-Copernican Theory that the earth was the center of the universe. Two children did not know how old they were. Five children did not know their birth dates. Four children could not count to ten. The four oldest thought the Civil War was fought between the Germans and the Japs.”

He says after learning all this information, “The job I had taken to assuage the demon of do-gooderism was a bit more titanic than anticipated.” Talk about an understatement.

The book documents the year he spent with the children and how he struggled to share with them the world beyond their island. He shared with them both classical and pop music, took them on field trips, brought people from all walks of life to the island to teach them, and generally tried to open their eyes and prepare them for the day when they would leave their island. The book is filled with stories that will make you laugh out loud and will bring a tear to your eye. The kids are funny, charming, and brave in the face of the world that has placed them in such poverty and ignorance and it is wonderful to see them grow throughout the book.

Conroy also shares the challenges presented to him by the system. The education system did not want to hear about the problems on the island and began to consider Conroy the problem for bringing them to light. After his first year, there were a series of political and legal fights that led to his permanent dismissal. It is a sad end to the story, to see a man getting pushed aside by the political machine, but overall, this is a story of hope and the ability of each of us to make a difference in the world.

By the time he left, none of the children were great writers or mathematicians. They weren’t poets or nobel laureates. But they might have been given a fighting chance in the world after his year there. They were certainly going to be less adrift in the sea of humanity they would face when they left their little island than they otherwise would have been. Pat Conroy undoubtably changed those children’s lives forever. Upon reading this book, he might just change yours too.