false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg 483829 2 From an award-winning writer: an elegant, lively, moving novel that portrays the strangely celebrated and unsupervised childhood of four hippie offspring in the seventies and eighties. <br/><br/> When <i>Flower Children</i>'s first chapter was published as a short story in 1997, it announced the arrival of a new literary voice: it won every literary prize applicable (the Ploughshares' Cohen Award, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize) and was included in the 1998 <i>Best American Short Stories</i>. Now, Maxine Swann expands and continues that story, bringing its four sibling characters through to the other end of childhood, in a much-anticipated book that only Swann could write. <br/><br/> Based on the author's own family, <i>Flower Children</i> is the amusing, moving, beautifully painted story of four children growing up in rural Pennsylvania, the offspring of devoutly hippie parents. Impossibly at odds with their surroundings, the children find themselves both delighted and unnerved by a life without limits. A swing hangs in the middle of the living room. The children run free all day, dance naked in the rain, and go riding on ponies with the boys who live up the road. But as their childhood is celebrated, the freedoms their parents have given them have also compromised their innocence. In time, their world starts to collapse. The parents split. Puberty hits. The children are mortified by what they know and have seen. They long for structure, normalcy, restraint: the very things their parents have avoided. <br/><br/> Haunting and celebratory by turns, <i>Flower Children</i> is at once a portrait of childhood's unbridled joy and the story of a unique generation. Ann Patchett recently selected another excerpt of the novel to appear in the 2006 <i>Best American Short Stories</i>. 472153 2007 Flower Children total:329|5:17|4:62|3:129|2:80|1:41| 329 921 518 102 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 1 6 false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 03 18:45:55 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 03 18:47:10 -0700 2007 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 4 2 false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Nov 06 07:05:46 -0800 2007 Wed Nov 07 10:52:06 -0800 2007 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 1 2 false Thu Feb 21 19:34:51 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 21 19:56:34 -0800 2008 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 3 1 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Aug 15 09:52:53 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 15 09:54:45 -0700 2007 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 2 1 false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Dec 15 13:13:25 -0800 2007 Mon Dec 17 11:45:30 -0800 2007 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 0 1 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Jan 21 05:54:40 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 21 06:02:32 -0800 2008 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 5 0 false Wed Oct 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 22:02:45 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 22:21:19 -0700 2009 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 2 0 false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed May 20 07:06:07 -0700 2009 Wed May 20 07:25:55 -0700 2009 by Amelia Thomas

As children, they run in the meadows, they catch butterflies, they wade shoulder deep into mud puddles, they wait fervently for their father's visits, they watch their baby sitter smoke pot out of a hookah, and they forever dream. ...more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 2 0 false Fri Dec 05 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 15 13:57:42 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 07 10:30:22 -0800 2008 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 3 0 false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jul 24 10:39:05 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 24 10:39:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 2 0 false Mon Mar 09 14:25:16 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 14 10:19:35 -0700 2009 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 2 0 false Sun Sep 16 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat May 24 15:50:17 -0700 2008 Sat May 24 15:50:40 -0700 2008 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 3 0 false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 26 07:45:14 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 26 07:53:08 -0700 2009 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 3 0 false Wed Oct 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 18 20:01:45 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 09:00:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 4 0 false Thu Aug 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 24 20:58:42 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 24 21:05:32 -0700 2009 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 1 0 false Sat Feb 21 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 20 16:19:49 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 22 08:54:13 -0800 2009 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 5 0 false Thu Oct 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 31 15:37:25 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 31 15:42:19 -0700 2009 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 3 1 false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 27 10:19:39 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 27 10:23:57 -0700 2008 more...]]> 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 4 0 false Tue Jan 20 11:16:41 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 10:21:51 -0800 2009 483829 1594489459 9781594489457 324 100 2.80 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175133755m/483829.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483829.Flower_Children 1 0 false Fri Jan 09 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 13:14:06 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 20:08:56 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=483829