"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 attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909.
That unforgettable season deposits the 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.
"Flawless...The Whistling Season is a book that strives for more than
beauty, which it achieves, it reaches for joy."--O, the Oprah Magazine