Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy

King Conroy (The Same Sweet Girls’ Guide to Life) honors her late husband, Prince of Tides author Pat Conroy, who died in 2016, with this heartfelt memoir about their 18-year marriage. The couple met in 1995 at a literary event in Alabama when Conroy was an established author and King Conroy hadn’t yet published her first novel. Both were going through divorces, and King Conroy charmingly describes how she and Conroy kept in touch via phone calls before finally going on a date in 1997. A romance blossomed, and in 1998—when they were both past 50—they married: “We just enjoyed being together,” the author writes. “We talked for hours and we laughed a lot.” During their time together, they published five books each. King Conroy credits Conroy with encouraging her to write The Sunday Wife and reveals that he gave her the ultimate gift after they married: her first writing room. She celebrates his “exuberant” presence and recalls his enthusiasm for helping developing writers. The final chapters, about Conroy’s cancer diagnosis and his death at home, are tinged with sadness and hope. This engrossing tearjerker will appeal to fans of both King Conroy and her husband, and those inspired by literary romances. (Oct.)