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.