The celebrated Southern writer Pat Conroy, whose bestselling works include The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, has revealed he has been been told by doctors that he has pancreatic cancer.
“I have recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,” the 70-year-old wrote on Facebook.
“With the help of the wonderful people at MD Anderson (a cancer centre attached to the University of Texas), I intend to fight it hard. I am grateful to all my beloved readers, my friends and my family for their prayers. I owe you a novel and I intend to deliver it.”
The writer’s publishers, Doubleday, said Conroy was receiving "excellent care and support from his doctors".
“The Conroy family asks for privacy at this time as Pat fights this challenging illness with the same spirit of courage that has forged his writing career. Pat and his family are enormously grateful to all of his readers for their prayers and good wishes,” said a statement.
Like The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides, most of Conroy's 11 books have been novels, many closely or loosely based on his own life, but he also wrote the memoir My Losing Season, in which he revisited his basketball team's losing season at The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, South Carolina.
His books have sold more than five million copies in the United States alone. The 1986 novel The Prince of Tides was made into a movie starring Nick Nolte and Barbara Streisland.
“I celebrated my 70th birthday in October and realised that I’ve spent my whole writing life trying to find out who I am and I don’t believe I’ve even come close,” Conroy added.
“It was in Beaufort in sight of a river’s sinuous turn, and the movements of its dolphin-proud tides that I began to discover myself and where my life began at fifteen.”
