Will I love The Great Santini?

The Great Santini is a biography/memoir of author Patrick Conroy’s father, a Marine pilot – I recommend this book because I think it is such an accurate illustration of military family life and life with a career military man. Especially accurate to me are the struggles it illustrates between husband and wife and father and children. For me, too, it was an interesting coincidence that I substitute taught at the same school in North Carolina (though a different decade) as the author attended as a child when his father was stationed at MCAS Cherry Point.

Honor, family, and appearance. A story of a rigid and overpowering father, who deep down loves his family but is too tough to admit it. It's honest and brutal. The abuse the father doles out is both discipline and love. Though much of the story is difficult to read. It resonated with me as I grew up at the same time as the book is written.