"If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it." So thinks Russell Culver, when his "teacher, Miss Myrt Arbuckle, hauled off and died." With no teacher in his one-room schoolhouse, Russell thinks he's home free -- until his big sister, Tansy, takes the job. Unlike Miss Arbuckle, Tansy isn't hard of hearing or arthritic -- she can still whup plenty hard.
Hardheaded, no-nonsense, and determined to call her students to the "trough of knowledge," teacher Tansy is Russell's worst nightmare, and he aims to head out for harvest in the Dakotas. Even accidentally setting fire to the boy's privy on the first day of school doesn't slow her down, nor does a series of pranks and mishaps that includes an exploding stove and a snake in her desk. But both Tansy and his father are smarter and wiser than Russell knows, and they have some definite ideas about his future.