Book bits

Flower Children

Author: Maxine Swann

Growing up near Hanover, N.H. in the 1980s I saw my share of rural counter­cultural influences mixed with the stratosphere of Ivy League educations. I heard stories about what it was like to eat meat raised in the backyard from friends also considering which name-brand colleges to apply to for early acceptance. We had philosophical debates between classes and swam in the local dam and grilled on its banks hours before the prom.

That's probably why I found a certain poetic truth in Maxine Swann's Flower Children, the story of four children coming of age in 1980s rural Pennsylvania. Their parents, who had turned their backs on their upper-class roots a decade earlier, are making a go of it as hippies, attending protest rallies and building a house with a dirt-floor kitchen. The children wander as free as pollen on a breeze and watch their parents' skinny dipping parties from a safe distance.

But barely one step into "Flower Children" and things get complicated. Their father's new girlfriend drifts in and out of their house, picks vegetables from their garden, and attends family parties. Soon their parents separate.

Their father, who treats them more like his best friends than his progeny, arrives on weekends to pile them into his car for unplanned adventures. Their mother holds down the family fort, and occasionally a boyfriend becomes part of the family mix.

The children observe and move through these experiences with a detached nonchalance, told through Swann's compelling prose that flows as easily as water. Maeve, the second oldest, narrates every other chapter. But while boundary-free living may be liberating for adults, the children relish the comfort found in rules when they first begin attending school:

"They're delighted by these rules, these arbitrary lines that regulate behavior and mark off forbidden things...."

Despite the constant changes at home and efforts to steady a father who seems completely unhinged, the flower children take root and flourish. Their parents' needs and quirks fade as the children grow and the opposite sex becomes more interesting.

The short novel ends with a chapter titled "Return," where the siblings, now living on their own, reunite at the house. They find reassurance in "discovering in each other their own gestures," and they note changes, "[the house] has grown rooms and walls, like a crustacean that has added an extra shell." It affirms the old truth that "you can't go home again," except for this reader who, in the pages of "Flower Children," briefly found herself there again.

– Kendra Nordin

Three books about spies

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