Emphasis Preaching Journal

One of Pat Conroy's early books, The Water is Wide, tells the story of a young schoolteacher assigned to work on one of the barrier islands of South Carolina. The children in the school are African-American descendants of slaves who labored serving the plantations that raised sea-island cotton during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The teacher is fresh-out-of-school and filled with idealistic plans for enriching the lives of his students.