William Maxwell

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...

"An illuminating celebration of an author widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's great unsung heroes of American literature As a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975, William Maxwell helped shaped several generations' sense of the literary short story. At the same time, Maxwell himself was also an exceptional novelist, short story writer, essayist, children's author, and memoirist. Given unique, unfettered access to Maxwell's...

The Folded Leaf, first published in 1945, is a classic American coming-of-age novel. In the suburbs of Chicago in the 1920s, two boys initiate an unusual friendship: Lymie Peters, a skinny and somewhat clumsy boy who always gets good grades, and newcomer Spud Latham, a star athlete and mediocre student. Spud accepts Lymie's devotion without questioning it, but once high school ends and the boys enter college, tensions begin to arise between them....

"Buried in the archive for almost ninety years, Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille traces the adventures of a rowdy troupe of dockworkers, prostitutes, and political organizers--collectively straight and queer, disabled and able-bodied, African, European, Caribbean, and American. Set largely in the culture-blending Vieux Port of Marseille at the height of the Jazz Age, the novel takes flight along with Lafala, an acutely disabled but abruptly wealthy...

Dr. and Mrs. Donald's dog Bun dreams of living in his own little house instead of the Donalds' house, but when his wish comes true it is not as nice as he expected.

""The novelist works with what life has given him," wrote William Maxwell. "It was no small gift that I was allowed to lead my boyhood in a small town in Illinois where the elm trees cast a mixture of light and shade over the pavements." The patterns of light, love, and a sorrow in this town, and the domestic particulars of the early 20th century, are at the heart of Maxwell's early fiction. They Came Like Swallows is the story of two boys, their...

Twelve short stories which probe the mystery of an anthropologist's life.