As Paul, now in his 60s, travels to meet with a “convocation of delegates from the rural school system” in Great Falls, he finds himself thinking back to a very different learning event that occurred when he was 13, “where Rose stepped down from the train, bringing several kinds of education to the waiting four of us” (29). The graduate of a one-room school, the adult Paul values the more individualized and spontaneous education that he received from Morrie—an education in which any setting and situation could produce knowledge—over the more regimented and impersonal setting of larger, age-stratified schools. Remembering the day the well-educated Morrie took over the Marias Coulee school, Paul revels in the classroom learning that inspired him. In addition to usual courses in arithmetic, reading, and penmanship, Morrie offers practical instruction in meteorology and astronomy. Morrie also focuses on individual students, devoting extra time to teaching Paul Latin and coming up with a way to convince Eddie to wear reading glasses that will not wound his pride.
Beyond the classroom, the Milliron boys receive an education in human behavior. They find Rose, unlike any person they have ever known. Entering their lives like a gentle but irresistible force of nature, she transforms their home with her new routines and pleasant but intractable disposition.
By Ivan Doig