The Whistling Season

Content Warning: This section of the guide references the source text’s description of animal cruelty.

While driving past Marais Coulee, where he grew up, Paul Milliron recalls the evening in the fall of 1909—48 years earlier—when his father, Oliver, discovered an advertisement in the Westwater Gazette from a widow seeking housekeeping work in Montana. Although the advertisement is clear about its subject’s inability to cook, Oliver decides to respond, assuming that this potential housekeeper cannot possibly mean what she says. The proposal surprises his sons, though they recognize the domestic difficulties they have experienced since their mother’s death.

At the end of the chapter, Paul reflects broadly on the defining moments of his and his brothers’ childhoods. He muses on the task that waits for him in Great Falls—communicating to representatives of rural areas that their small schools must close—and reflects on what will be lost as a result.

Paul and his brothers ride their horses to school the next morning. They realize all the other students will hear and comment on their attempt to hire a housekeeper. Paul describes the responses of the various groups of young people among the 36 students in eight grades who shared the same classroom.