They came like swallows
By: William Maxwell.
Edition: Modern Library ed.
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 191
Subjects: Family -- Illinois -- Fiction; Mothers -- Death -- Fiction
Description: First published in 1937, They Came Like Swallows was William Maxwell's second novel. It tells of an ordinary American family overtaken by the devastating epidemic of the Spanish influenza of 1918. The book begins on the day before the armistice in a small midwestern town, and the events are seen from the perspective, in turn, of eight-year-old Peter Morison - called Bunny; of his older brother, Robert; and of their father.

They are witnesses to a domestic tragedy that is written with beauty and a quite magnificent tenderness.