Chorus Beneath Our Feet, The

The Chorus Beneath Our Feet
by Melanie Schnell
Published by Radiant Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$25.00 ISBN 9781998926329

Regina writer Melanie Schnell’s debut novel, While the Sun is Above Us, earned her the Saskatchewan First Book Award and The City of Regina Award at the 2013 Saskatchewan Book Awards, and I expect her recently released second novel, The Chorus Beneath Our Feet, will also garner attention, particularly for its ambitious plot.

Schnell’s braided several surprisingly disparate elements and parallelled the relationships between two sets of siblings in this crime story set in “Ravenwood,” Alberta. The first brother and sister were among the 100,000 Barnardo’s Homes’ children shipped from England to Canada to labour on farms between 1869 – 1948. These 100,000 “home children” were ripped from their families and treated extremely poorly in Canada. Ravenwood rumours suggest that the bodies of these separated siblings are buried beneath the massive oak tree (the “Harron Tree”) in the city’s central park. A local construction company is razing the tree for the construction of a mall, and protesters are rallying around the stately oak.

The second set of siblings are Jes, an army Sargeant who’s returned home after eight years in Afghanistan—he’s accompanying his fellow soldier and best friend’s body, and Jes himself is sporting an eye patch thanks to the same explosion that killed his buddy—and Mary. Jes and his weird-since-childhood sister lived with a “mean drunk” father, and their mother was killed in a car accident when Mary was twelve. Mary stopped speaking shortly after the fatality, and now she’s “ended up in the park with the other homeless people,” including the delusional Norse-mythology-themed-cult leader, Izzy. Jes literally sleeps in the oak tree, which has “told [her] its real name” (“Oman”), offers her “a secret knowledge,” and has shared that the home children’s bodies are indeed buried beneath the oak’s canopy, and they must be reunited before the tree is felled.

Jes never treated his strange sister—who writes “maddening nonsensical notes”—kindly, and he’s remorseful now, especially once he learns that a newborn’s body was found hanging in the tree and the police want to question Mary in connection with the murder.

There’s a strong sense of immediacy here: the park’s demolition begins Saturday; Neil’s funeral in Edmonton is also on Saturday, and protocol requires that Jes be there; mentally ill “Charlie,” another unhomed park dweller, informs Jes that Mary’s life’s in danger; and nobody can tell Jes where his sister is. The clock’s ticking. Mary believes Jes can save the tree (and thus reunite the historical siblings), but as has been her way, she’s left only obscure notes for her brother. She’s learned that “in the cacophony of life, to pierce the rampant blindness and deafness, one must attempt to communicate in a way that the words can touch someone deep beneath their skin,” as Oman communicates with her.

The various subplots and the connections between characters are much like a tree’s tangled and extensive root system. This fast-paced novel reminds us to offer graceto ourselves … and to those who are nothing like us.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM