In this tender evocation of family life – an early work by the great American novelist and editor who died in 2000 – the unvoiced currents of love and need that run through all our lives are eloquently measured. To eight-year old Bunny Morison his mother is an angelic comforter in whose absence nothing seems quite real or alive. To his older brother, Robert, his mother is someone he must protect, especially since the deadly influenza epidemic of 1918 is ravaging their small Mid-western town. To James Morison, his wife Elizabeth is the centre of a life that would crumble all too suddenly were she to disappear. Through their eyes, Maxwell paints a portrait of an American family and the woman who is its emotional pillar, deftly rendering the civilities and constraints of a vanished era.