The wealthy of Charleston live “South of Broad Street”. Not just wealthy but aristocrats: people whose ancestors signed the “Declaration of Independence”. These are people who don’t want outsiders to participate in their fancy parties or attend school with their special children.
But “The Toad”, Leo King delivers papers to those folks and his mother Dr. King is the principal of the local high school. Leo is not upper class and, in fact was kicked out of the local Catholic school for possession of Heroine. He wasn’t guilty. One of his classmates had asked him to hide it and he did. He was caught and he refused to rat out his classmate, taking the consequences. During his probation Leo learned the value of helping other people while doing his community service. He befriended an antique store owner and a couple of sets of orphans who had really bad starts in life. He brought them into Peninsula High School and helped them to become accepted into the high school community. His mother the principal hired a black man as coach for the football team, which was a first in South Carolina. Half of the team refused to come out but The Toad managed to bring them together and with the help of the black son of the coach they made a football team that went to the semi-finals in the state.
As they left high school Leo and his friends from High School formed a cohesive group and continued to work reformatory magic in the Charleston upper class community. Leo and his friends help the Charleston people accept black folks as a part of the community. Conroy brings us the difficulty of dealing with deep-seated racial prejudice from the past as well as fear and horrid treatment of gay men infected with Aids.
Leo and his friends experience high successes and terrible failures. They are plagued with the stalking murderous attacks from a mentally deranged father of one of the sets of twins as an external force as well as their own internal prejudice and fears. Yet, through it all the group manages to hang together and come out in the end. They are damaged but not destroyed.
In the end Conroy shows us that it is not wealth and blood-lines that matter but the depth of the individual soul and the ability of the soul to be a human being with sympathy and passion that matters. Leo King barely manages to save himself from the suicide suffered by his brother Steve, in the end, but he does get back to his newspaper job in Charleston. In the end he is a whole man; a better man. The world is a better place.
I give “South of Broad” a 9 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
