This is my first venture into Doig’s fiction. He is known as the definitive novelist of Montana, in the same way that Pat Conroy is the writer most associated with South Carolina. In anticipation of visiting Montana later this year (2010), it seemed appropriate to see what Doig had to say about the place. Of course, it might have required a bit of a time machine to step into the world depicted here. Maybe like reading Mary Poppins to get a sense of London.

Brothers Paul, Damon and Toby Milliron live with their father, Oliver, on a homestead in Marias Coulee, Montana. Mom had succumbed to a burst appendix, and the house was in dire need of an organizing force. Enter Rose Llewellyn and her brother Morris Morgan, late of Minneapolis. Rose, recently widowed and eager for a new start in a new place, comes to Montana to work as a housekeeper to the Milliron family. The foppish, ultra-urban Morgan tags along. East (of a sort) meets West. Urban meets rural. Intellectual meets physical.

I was reminded of Little House and of a very 1950s/1960s family entertainment sensibility. I was half expecting Rose to descend on an umbrella. And the house-maintenance-challenged Oliver would have fit quite nicely into say, Bonanza, or the Donna Reed show.

But the core here is the coming of age of Paul, 13 when we first meet him. He faces some of the usual challenges of young men, a bully in particular. But Rose and Morris light him up like a lantern and he glows like a light in the dark. Morris has a world of knowledge to go along with his impressive moustache. Rose, whose habit of whistling while she works informs the book’s title, has a warmth that emanates as she cleans more than dust from the Milliron home. But there is a secret to Rose and Morris, a bit of shadow on their lightly-explained past.

The story is joyful and warm without becoming too icky-sweet. Doig focuses very much on language, with Paul and Morris as his lenses, and tells a bit about the life of a working farmer in a dry land. Destiny resides as a theme as well, but lightly. Paul is very well drawn, although I would have liked seeing him grappling with the perils of the opposite sex a lot more. I quite enjoyed the book and will dig through the piles of books in our vast stores for more works by Doig.