the last book I ever read (Pat Conroy's My Reading Life, excerpt five)

from My Reading Life by Pat Conroy:

When The Great Santini was published in 1976, my entire family flipped out and went into a full fruitcake mode that lasted for many years. Grandma Conroy called me, pronounced me worse than Judas Iscariot, told me she would never speak to me again, and proved as good as her word. My father disappeared for three days and Uncle Willie called to tell me that he had gone somewhere to commit suicide and I had only myself to blame when they recovered his broken body at the foot of some ravine in North Georgia.