Flower Children Book

“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 1970s and 80s. 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.

— The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Writing in lucid, crystalline prose that shifts back and forth from the first person to the third, Ms. Swann has expanded a short story that scooped up a handful of prizes (the O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize and Ploughshares' Cohen Award) and turned it into a small gem of a novel, a novel that showcases her eye for detail, her psychological acuity, her ability to conjure up a particular place and time.