POSITIVELY GOOD READS
The Whistling Season (2006)
by Ivan Doig
The Whistling Season is told
mostly in flashback by Paul Milliron, Montana superintendent of
schools, who looks back on his seventh grade in 1909 in a
one-room school. Paul was the oldest of three boys who had lost
their mother just the year before. Juggling single parenthood
with farming, Oliver, their father, decides to hire a
housekeeper.
“Can’t cook but doesn’t bite” was Rose Llewellyn’s winning plug
for the position. The beguiling Rose arrives in Marias Coulee
with an unexpected companion, her scholarly, eccentric brother
Morrie. Morrie gets a job, too, when the schoolteacher runs off
with an itinerant preacher. Even though he’s never taught,
Morrie is brilliantly inventive in the classroom.
The Whistling Season is both a personal story about
Rose’s and Morrie’s huge effects on the Milliron family and a
paean to the lost and missed rural schoolhouses that not only
educated children but served as centerpieces of the community.
Now in his 60s, Paul dreads announcing that Montana’s remaining
one-room schools are closing.
Ivan Doig, a product of rural Montana, knew of what he wrote. The
Whistling Season will appeal to readers who want a warm
story, likable characters, clear prose, nostalgia, and humor.
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