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“Nothing happens by accident. I learned this the hard way, long before I knew that the hard way was the only path to true, certain knowledge. Early in my life, I came to fear the power of strange conveyances. Though I thought I always chose the safest path, I found myself powerless to avoid the small treacheries of fate. Because I was a timid boy, I grew up fearful and knew deep in my heart the world was out to get me. Before the summer of my senior year in high school, the real life I was always meant to lead lay coiled and ready to spring in the hot Charleston days that followed.”

So begins the first chapter of South of Broad, Pat Conroy’s lush, remarkable new novel set in Charleston, South Carolina, and spanning some 20 years from the late 1960s to the 1980s. Following a memoir (My Losing Season) and a homespun recipe collection (The Pat Conroy Cookbook), South of Broad is Conroy’s first novel in 14 years. And lucky for us, it’s another big, sprawling, heartbreaking novel, sure to please seasoned Conroy fans and new readers alike.

It’s said that great writers write what they know—and that’s certainly true of Conroy. As the son of a Marine colonel, Conroy channeled his experiences into his first novel, The Great Santini. Perhaps his most autobiographical work, it depicted a teenage son brutalized by a violent fighter pilot father. Childhood abuse and tragedy also haunt the Wingo children in the 1986 novel The Prince of Tides, most notably Savannah Wingo, who repeatedly tries to take her own life. Conroy’s own sister reportedly battled mental illness, and one of his brothers committed suicide. Though every Conroy novel is different, the themes of parental abuse, mental illness, forbidden love, Catholic guilt, reconciling one’s past with the present and, of course, the nature and meaning of Southern identity, come back over and over. And in South of Broad, Conroy artfully handles these seemingly unpalatable subjects once again.

Eighteen-year-old Leopold Bloom King, the son of Jasper and Lindsay King, is a deeply misunderstood teenager. Named after a character in Ulysses by his James Joyce-loving mother (who also happens to be the school principal and an ex-nun), Leo has spent much of his childhood trying to make sense of the suicide of the older brother he “idol-worshipped,” Steve, and his strained relationship with his icy, overbearing mother (who insists her own son call her “Dr. King”). Steve’s suicide shocked and devastated the King family, throwing Leo into a tailspin of anger, panic and depression.

After years of therapy and self-imposed exile, Leo vows that the summer of 1969 will be his fresh start. Over the course of the next few months, the once friendless Leo King meets and befriends an eccentric cast of characters. There is Ike Jefferson, the black son of the high school’s new football coach who is wary of getting close to whites in a time of racial tension; the orphaned siblings Niles and Starla Whitehead, assigned to Leo’s charge as they are begrudgingly integrated into the local high school; the beautiful Molly Huger, her entitled boyfriend Chad Rutledge and Chad’s tomboy sister, Fraser—members of the blue-blood Charleston elite, who seem almost untouchable to someone like Leo. And then there are the glamorous, flamboyant Poe twins—Sheba and Trevor—running from the demons of their family’s past and landing in the house across the street from the Kings. It is the Poe twins, with their mysterious, terrifying legacy, who will change Leo’s life—and the lives of those around them—forever.

It’s an impressive lineup of characters, and an ambitious, multi-faceted story of prejudice, privilege and love that moves from the heady days of a teenage Charleston summer to the bleak realities of AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Conroy uses his many gifts as a storyteller and cultural observer to make South of Broad at once a complete portrait of a specific time and place, and also a classic, timeless coming-of-age story.

This is a novel for anyone who has had real, imperfect friendships, who has questioned themselves and their choices, and who has gone the distance (both metaphorically and literally) for someone they loved. Conroy is a master of American fiction and he has proved it once again in this magnificent love letter to his beloved Charleston, and to friendships that will stand the test of time.

Adapting any book for the screen is a tricky process, but surely no material has presented a greater challenge than Arthur Golden’s brilliant debut novel, Memoirs of a Geisha. First published in 1997, this dazzling first-person account of a geisha’s life is filled with beautifully detailed descriptions of intricate Japanese rituals and traditions. Could any filmmaker capture the cultural nuances, the rich emotional lives and subtle conflicts so elegantly depicted in the novel? Moviegoers will find out on December 9 when director Rob Marshall’s vision of Memoirs opens in theaters nationwide. Released by Columbia Pictures, the film was produced by Lucy Fisher, Douglas Wick (Gladiator) and Steven Spielberg, who was originally slated to direct but stepped aside when he couldn’t fit the film into his demanding schedule.

Oscar-nominated director Marshall (Chicago) prepared for the project by reading the novel and setting off on a research trip to Japan with key members of his production team. The group scouted locations on the Sea of Japan and visited several sites in Kyoto, where much of the novel is set.

After an international search to fill the lead role, Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang was cast as Nitta Sayuri, a young woman who rises from an impoverished upbringing to become one of Kyoto’s most accomplished geishas. Best known to American audiences for her roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Jackie Chan’s Rush Hour 2, Zhang is a talented dancer as well as an actress, which gave her an edge for the part. Dance is the ultimate form of artistic expression in the geisha world, Marshall says, so it has a special place in our film. It was incredibly exciting for us to blend our vision as artists with the beautiful traditions of Japanese dance in telling Sayuri’s story. When she read the novel, Zhang says she was struck by Golden’s ability to capture the voice of a Japanese woman. I couldn’t believe that a man wrote this book about the life of a woman, Zhang recalls. And I couldn’t believe it was an American man writing with such detail about a little-known Japanese subculture. Playing her love interest in the film is Ken Watanabe, one of Japan’s top actors and an Oscar nominee for his role in The Last Samurai. Two Asian film stars, Michelle Yeoh and Gong Li, take the roles of Sayuri’s patron (Mameha) and bitter rival (the geisha Hatsumomo).

The movie was filmed on location in Japan and on several Hollywood soundstages. At Ventura Farms, a horse ranch near Los Angeles, a huge replica of Kyoto’s geisha district was constructed, complete with a river running through the center of the set.

Ultimately, though, Marshall thinks it’s the message of the movie, rather than its exotic setting, that will connect with moviegoers. This story lives in a very specific world, and yet the underlying theme of the triumph of the human spirit against all odds connects to any culture, he says. The fact that this one child, after being taken from her home and sold into slavery, can survive and ultimately find love is deeply moving to me. Especially when that love is forbidden to her. Golden, a native of Chattanooga and a member of the family that owns the New York Times, studied Japanese art and history at Harvard and Columbia before going to work in Tokyo, where a co-worker revealed that his mother had been a geisha. From that spark, the book was born, and Golden completed three drafts before he settled on the first-person voice that distinguishes the novel. His interviews with a real-life geisha, who allowed Golden to observe her rituals of dress and makeup, contributed to the book’s authentic feel.

For those who haven’t read the novel, several movie tie-in editions are newly available from Random House. A Vintage paperback, a mass-market paperback and two audio editions are among the new choices. There’s also a Spanish movie tie-in edition, not surprising since the book found a worldwide audience and has been published in more than 30 countries. Fans of the book and the film will also want to check out an appealing coffee-table book from Newmarket Press, Memoirs of a Geisha: Portrait of a Film. Included are more than 100 full-color stills from the movie, along with essays on the film’s costumes, choreography and production design. Arthur Golden contributes an introduction about the experience of stepping onto the movie set in California. Here in front me was something far too fully realized to have grown out of those murky images in my head, Golden writes. While writing the book I wasn’t using the medium of stunning visual imagery but of language, and language is a poor vehicle for rendering the real world with any precision. Just how well the real world of Golden’s imagination is captured in the film version of Memoirs will be judged by critics and fans in the weeks ahead.