How Fred and her friends grow with Miss Agnes is the heart of this story, told with much humor and warmth by Fred herself This is a story about Alaska, about the old ways and the new, about pride. Fred knows what this is about: Just when things seem to be good, things go back to being the same. But then Miss Agnes says she's homesick and will go back to England at the end of the year. Maybe it's because Miss Agnes can't smell anything, let alone fish, that things seem to be all right. And no other teacher ever, ever told the kids they were each good at something. No other teacher ever said Fred's deaf older sister should come to school, too. No other teacher plays opera recordings, talks about "hairy os," and Athabascan kids becoming doctors or scientists. No other teacher throws away old textbooks and reads Greek myths and Robin Hood. Will another teacher come to the small Athabascan village on the Koyukuk River to teach Fred and her friends in the one-room schoolhouse? Will she stay, or will she hate the smell of fish, too? Fred doesn't know what to make of Miss Agnes Sutterfield. It's 1948 and ten-year-old Fred has just watched her teacher leave - another in a long line of teachers who have left the village because the smell of fish was too strong, the way of life too hard.
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