""The novelist works with what life has given him," wrote William Maxwell. "It was no small gift that I was allowed to lead my boyhood in a small town in Illinois where the elm trees cast a mixture of light and shade over the pavements." The patterns of light, love, and a sorrow in this town, and the domestic particulars of the early 20th century, are at the heart of Maxwell's early fiction. They Came Like Swallows is the story of two boys, their father, and the unbearable loss they suffer in the winter of 1918. The Folded Leaf describes the arc of an obsessive adolescent friendship that ends in near-tragedy. Time Will Darken It paints a portrait of a small, straitlaced community where gossip can ruin even its most blameless member. The achievement of these novels is here complemented by the youthful, comic Bright Center of Heaven - out of print for nearly 70 years - and nine short stories."--Jacket.