From an award-winning short-story writer comes this spare, lively, moving novel portraying the strangely celebrated and unsupervised childhood of four hippie offspring in the 1970s and 80s. ...'A work of stunning lyricism and intense originality' (Mary Gordon, author of Pearl). From an award-winning short story writer comes this spare, lively, moving novel, quickly embraced by critics and readers, portraying the strangely celebrated and unsupervised childhood of four hippie offspring in the 1970's and 80's. Based on the author's own upbringing, Flower Children tells the story of four children growing up in rural Pennsylvania, impossibly at odds with their surroundings. In time, as the sheltered utopia their parents have created begins to collapse, the children long for structure and restraint-and all their parents have avoided.
Swann, Maxine Mazime Swann's short story "Flower Children" won the Cohen Award, The O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize and was included in The Best American Short Stories. "Serious Girls" is her first novel.