The Whistling Season

Ivan Doig

Feb 2007 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

“Can’t cook but doesn’t bite.” So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an “A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition” that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch—a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the “several kinds of education”—none of them of the textbook variety—Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region’s one-room schoolhouse.

A paean to a vanished way of life and the eccentric individuals and idiosyncratic institutions that made it fertile, The Whistling Season is Ivan Doig at his evocative best.

Ratings and reviews

Lyrically written, I really enjoyed this book's cadence and characters. Normally, I prefer more plot-driven books, and I don't have any particular fondness for Montana or the West in general, but there was just something inexplicably wonderful about this book. I really had a great time reading it! It did remind me a bit of Leif Enger's books, so I think that anyone who enjoyed his works, would enjoy this one as well!

Not much here. I picked this up on the strength and beauty of This House of Sky. However, this fictional memoir wallows in nostalgia for one room school houses, horseback riding, Latin lessons, and Victorian social sensibilities, with a fluffy storyline that seems subservient to those themes. I would look at Doig's other works first.

About the author

Ivan Doig (1939-2015) was born in Montana and grew up along the Rocky Mountain Front, the dramatic landscape that has inspired much of his writing. A recipient of a lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association, he is the author of fifteen novels and four works of nonfiction.