He also wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, "Ancestors" (1972). His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss, and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old and growing up in the rural Midwestern United States. After the flu epidemic, young Maxwell had to move away from the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He spoke of his loss, "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it ... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away."