"THEY Came Like Swallows" is the story of an insignificant family of Illinois caught in the rapids of a post-war world. The story opens with the description of this young family, a description which almost at once introduces us to each member in terms which characterize them to the very end of the novel. Bunny, the youngest Morison at this time, appeals to us for his quiet sentimentality. The relations between this sensitive boy and his mother are as touching as they are true to life. His older brother Robert, aged thirteen, has had a serious accident which resulted in the amputation of his leg. Because of this handicap, the boy seems in Bunny's eyes to have usurped all the love and devotion of the parents and to have become a tyrant in the family.

Bunny soon is caught by the epidemic of Spanish Influenza which was ranging in 1918, and Robert Legins to reveal to us his personality which before we were only able to hint at from the references cast his way. He is struggling with the hardships of awkardness and self-consciousness so trying to a boy in the early teens. The author describes his feelings and his trials with the utmost tenderness and sympathy, yet giving us a faithful picture. The tragic scenes which follow on the heels of the opening chapter come to us at first through the mind of Robert and later through that of his father.

Family life of the most representative type is the subject matter of this book, and it is described with the most revealing tenderness flavored with frequent spurts of recognition of one's own childhood. The Sunday in November which is recorded hour by hour for us as the events slowly unreel is typical of any rainy Sunday when children are allowed to roam within the walls of the house. Bunny, who hated to be forced out of doors just because the sun was out, is allowed his own thoughts and amusements. Dinner table conversations of parents which pass beyond the comprehension of the younger generation, indignation and tears which result from the tantalizing of the older brother, all are described with a fidelity which creates in the reader, the author's own emotions. J. G. B., Jr.