Conroy, who died recently at the age of 70, revisits his youth and early years as a writer to credit those who saved him from a violent, Marine father moving from base to base in the South and turned him into a successful writer.  Conroy’s love of storytelling and language are evident in this lovely book, but also underline why he will never be in the pantheon of great American writers—-prose too purple and emotion too unmanaged.  Nevertheless, I totally enjoyed his paeans to his mother and her endless pushing of the classics on him, his English teacher Gene Norris who saw the potential and nurtured it, the nasty and grumpy librarian in his high school, his book seller Norman Berg who educated him about the business and gave him a writing refuge to finish his Great Santini, his bookstore owner buddy Cliff Graubart and the New York Book Store in Atlanta, his love affairs with other writers James Dickey, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Wolfe, and his time in Paris and Rome.  This is a big book squeezed breathlessly into 336 pages—pure Conroy storytelling!