The Prince of Tides was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1986. It became Conroy’s biggest commercial success — spending a year on the New York Times bestseller list, selling millions of copies, and becoming a cultural phenomenon amplified by Barbra Streisand’s 1991 film adaptation (which she directed and starred in, earning seven Academy Award nominations).
Tom Wingo, a failed football coach from South Carolina, travels to New York after his twin sister Savannah’s latest suicide attempt. Her psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein, asks Tom to tell her about their childhood — to provide the context for Savannah’s madness. What follows is a confession: the story of the Wingo family, their violent father, their ambitious mother, the South Carolina lowcountry that shaped them, and the catastrophic secret that broke all three Wingo children.
The novel is maximalist in every sense: over 600 pages, emotionally extravagant, linguistically ornate, willing to risk sentimentality in pursuit of catharsis. Conroy’s prose style — lush, adjective-heavy, cadenced for emotional peak — either transports or exhausts readers; there is no middle ground. The novel’s structure (Tom narrating in present-tense New York, intercalating memories of childhood) allows Conroy to juxtapose the sophisticated adult voice with the primal terror of a child.
The book’s central argument — that families transmit damage across generations, that silence about trauma creates madness, and that speaking the unspeakable is the only path to healing — resonated with millions of readers in the era of therapeutic culture. Its popularity with book clubs, therapists, and general readers made Conroy one of the best-selling literary novelists of the 1980s and 1990s.
Collecting The Prince of Tides
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1986): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Signed first edition: $75–$200
- Without jacket: $8–$20
The film adaptation keeps this title in continuous demand. Conroy signed extensively during his lifetime, so signed copies are available but command premiums.