Whistling Season by Ivan Doig (2006)

I wanted to read something about Montana or by a Montana author. I discovered

Ivan Doig, though the first book I picked up turned out to be about Seattle, so I didn't finish that. This IS about Montana and very close to the area I was visiting.

This is a wonderful story about a family, community and one room school house. The story is told by Paul, who is a superintendent of schools in recent day Montana, but he remembers 1910, when he was a student in his local schoolhouse. I always heard about the slogging for miles through snow to schoolhouses in other parts of the US and in Latvia, but Paul and his brothers rode to school on their horses.

Paul and his brothers Damon and Toby live with their father Oliver, who is the head of the local school board, farms, and works on the Big Ditch. (This last was the most unclear part of the story for me, I think it was meant to be an irrigation ditch or even some form of canal.) Their mother had passed away and the household of males is having a hard time with housekeeping and cooking. They see an ad in their paper from someone who "Can't cook but doesn't bite." They don't believe a woman can't cook, but Rose really does not, though she is a great housekeeper. She and her brother Morrie, who ends up teaching at the schoolhouse, change the lives of this family, and in a sense the whole community.

This book was more laid back than what I usually read, though there were moments of excitement. What the book did provide was a glimpse into the rural lives of Montana in the early 20th century with connections to the present day. It was heartwarming, uplifting, emphasized the importance of education, and gave me hope for humanity. The relationships between family members, students, neighbors - with all their different variations seemed realistic. Bullying and teasing have been a constant through the centuries, but I liked Doig's comment: "the politics I am in today could learn some civility from the playground kind..." (pg. 305) I enjoyed the way the focal family interacted and how they related to various difficult people around them. 

I got a better sense of how teachers kept eight grades going in one room - an incredible challenge. I know the kinds of things they learned are different from what I was taught or my child was taught, but if done well, it produced a thinking, literate populace. Morrie was the epitome of a teacher that could engage, and there were many examples of that. 1910 was the year of Haley's comet, and he focused the studies largely around that event. I did not realize that Mark Twain was born and died on the years of the Haley's comet.

I have a lot of books in my "to read" pile, but I hope to get around to something from Doig again in the future.