The Whistling Season

by Ivan Doig. Fiction. Copyright 2006. ISBN-13:978-0-15-101237-4. Published by Harcourt Books

Taking place in the late 50's, this first-person story is told by a Superintendent of Schools of Montana, whose sad job it is to go back to his hometown to close down the local country school in the name of consolidation. He visits the homestead where in 1909 as a 12-year-old he received an education that possibly he could have received only in the environment of a one-room school house. As he looks around, he fondly remembers those years.

His father, recently widowed, hires a housekeeper from Minnesota whose ad "Can't cook but doesn't bite" intrigues him. She brings her brother along; they both seem to be recovering from some kind of financial downturn, which brings mystery into the story: Are these people to be trusted? You just know they're hiding something, but seem to prove themselves trustworthy as the story progresses. The mystery is revealed in the end; your doubts are answered.

In the meantime, the reader is treated to an astounding (sometimes stretching to unbelievable) display of intelligence on the part of Paul, the young boy and teller of the story. After-school lessons in Latin, an uncanny recall of every detail of his dreams, an insight (not always accurate) into what is happening and will happen around him, mesh with his affection for his secure family to make a character you can almost identify with while you also stand back and wonder if such a person could really exist.

I enjoyed the story. At times the writer's use of language is difficult to comprehend, and I had to re-read passages, but as the book progresses, it gets easier. Living now on the high plains, I enjoyed the descriptions of the weather and landscape and the reach back into the early 20th century, to a time when life was simple but hard. I enjoyed the relationships within the family; the father is almost an Atticus Finch character -- with intellectual eccentricities, but who clearly loves and protects his three boys and raises them as well as he can.

I had never before read anything by the author, but I will look him up at the library. Other novels include Prairie Nocturne and Dancing at the Rascal Fair.