The whistling season Book

Right out-of-the-gate: this novel had my toes curling, my smile circling itself right around my head, my hands itching to start writing my thoughts down. My word, dear author, how you got me back into a wholesome zone with your wordsmithery.

Paul Milliron. 1952. There was a fire in the sky. It was the year of the Soviet Union and the Sputnik. The Russians in their kettle of gadgetry has sped past the USA into space. Science will be king, elected by panic.

It was also the year that he as Superintendent of Public Instructions had to make an earth-shattering decision about rural one-room schoolhouses. He remembered 1910 when Halley's comet came to visit as another kind of fire in the sky. The year Mark Twain passed away. He was a thirteen year old school boy at the time in Marias Cooley, Montana. It was the year of Morrie in his life.

1909-1910. Yes, a tinch of good ole' homestead wholesomeness covered the farmlands of the dryland prairie farms below the Montana skies. There was a little bit of a twitch: Morrie Morgan was there - the University of Chicago schollar-cum-chicken house cleaner, melodiously articulating his cultured words. The Thucididian orator who pleaded Paul's case against Father's sense of honor, and he did this with the lilt he tend to give to his most soaring notions.

To Paul, it was like hearing their father meet up with himself. Morrie was lightly built, and an extraordinary amount of him was mustache. It was one of those maximum ones such as I had seen in pictures of Rudyard Kipling, a soup-strainer and a lady-tickler and a fashion show, all in one.

There was father's laugh. Anything funny had to prove it to his nose first. A willing, but dubious cook. Mealtimes were a kind of tribal low point for the Milliron-tribe where this widower and his three sons Paul, Damon, and Toby had to contemplate whatever Father had managed to fight onto the table this time. As part of the tribe there was Houdini the dog, barking so loud he staggered around in circles when he got excited. Their only salvation was aunt Eunice's cooking each Sunday, where chicken drumsticks, the Missouri T-bones, had a place of honor on their plates and palate.

From Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Marias Coulee in Montana. New territory, new future in farming. But then Mother passed away, leaving Olivier Milliron and his three young boys to fend for themselves. Eventually Father got the idea of a housekeeper when he noticed a want-ad in the Westwater Gazette. The ad claimed: Can't Cook But Doesn't Bite Father said: "Paul, get out your pen. We have to draft a surrender."

"By circumlocution," Father said, which I (Paul the narrator) resolved to look up. "I want you boys, "he tapped Damon with the comb, "to tend to your manners over there. It's good practice for when our general domestication happens."

Well, manners was a different ball game at school, where the three Millirons constantly had to endure the teasing about the nonbiting housekeeper. ("Does she come with a muzzle?" "Is she so old she's a gummer?") Paul's only fellow seventh grader, Carnelia Craig, was front in line. She was unfairly deposited among unruly peasants such as the Marias Coulee one-room schoolhouse attendants instead of putting her in charge of Russia. Paul comprehended more of Carnelia's lofty approach to life, jaded as it was, than Paul did of his father's latest castles in the air.

And that is how Rose Llewellyn and Morrie Morgan , a brother and sister team, entered the dialogue. It was the first sign of a new destiny.

In between the human interactions, the pathetic fallacies in nature would from time to time intervene: the wind would practice for winter in October; sometimes the sky would be guiltlessly empty. Even the wind would have nothing to say, for once then. The clouds became moody. The weather would throw a fit.

Nobody saw it coming. The teacher ran off with that preacher, hopped on the train with that sky pilot. Baggy Miss Adelaide Trent have become Sister Jubal.

"Destiny strikes again," Oiver said wearily.

"GOOD MORNING, YOUNG SCHOLARS," the new teacher said. Three dozen of schoolchild ears took a considerable moment to adjust to that form of address, to that new source of articulation at the front of the class...

Somewhere along the way, Chaucer, that book-laden pilgrim to Canterbury sneaked in. Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach, to which Oliver Milliron --post haste to reason and a granary of knowledge... or post partum to hope... or post mortem to the good intentions-- replied But all be that he was a philosopher/Yet had he but gold in coffer."

It was the year when promises were made up down and sideways. A year of new beginnings with words, oh the words, right when the heavens were going to speak in a tongue of fire.

It became a bittersweet satorial journey of a widowed father and his three sons and what happened to make them the men they would become.

I don't want to say much more about the plot. I just want to add that it was one of the most atmospheric, gripping tales I have ever read. What started off as an innocent memory...

That's all I'm giving away.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. This novel was the perfect choice to start my reading year with. I simply fell in love with words. Again. Mix a little bit of Kent Haruf, and a little bit of Willa Cather, a splash of Richard Russo with a barrel full of Ivan Doig, and you're set for inexplicable excellence.

Happy New Year to everyone!