Buried by Ruth Chorney

Buried by Ruth Chorney - On Canada Day it feels right to post a review of a mystery set in Canada Even better this mystery takes place in Saskatchewan. Tera Jones McAllen is being interviewed in prison having been convicted by a jury of murdering her husband, Tom. Yet no body has been found. There is no evidence he has actually been killed since he went missing after deer hunting with a friend.

Buried is set in and around the fictional towns of Barkley and Deer Creek, the real life towns of Kelvington and Rose Valley based upon the location of Barkley. The locale means the book takes place in Saskatchewan just over an hour east of Melfort.

Tera and Tom meet at a community Boxing Day dance in 1991 when she is 17 and he is 22. By the end of the evening they are a couple. She is swept away by the tall, dark and handsome farmer. 

Her best friend, Allie, is wary of Tom mainly because of a troubled family history but Tera will not be swayed.

Her plans of going to university change when she becomes pregnant. Her father Arthur, the local pharmacist, and her mother Shelley, in a wheelchair with severe MS, receive the news gracefully. They want her to do what she thinks best and not feel pushed in any direction.

Tera is in love and marries Tom in the summer of 1992 and becomes a farm wife.

Like many Tom is a workaholic. A combined grain and cattle operation with no hired man is demanding.

Tera is pushed into doing farm work and comes to enjoy working with the cattle. She relishes the challenges of calving in mid-winter. Helping deliver a calf or saving a struggling newborn is intensely satisfying.

Life becomes hard as Tom’s hard drinking spirals into alcoholism. When done his day’s work on the farm he usually heads to the hotel in town.

Tera copes with Tom. Their marriage gradually disintegrates. By the time their sons leave home after high school Tera and Tom are just sharing a house.

And then over 20 years into their marriage Tom disappears after a hunting trip. He has returned home but there is no evidence of what happened on his return.

It is late in the book, a slender volume of 150 pages, that we learn why she was convicted.

The author, writing about the people and area in which she is resident, vividly depicts life in our part of rural Saskatchewan. They could be my friends and neighbours. In reading I was reminded of the Small Town Saskatchewan Mysteries of Nelson Brunanski set an hour west of Melfort in the fictional Crooked Lake, clearly the real life Wakaw.

Ruth has written well about Tera’s life. I wish she had fleshed out the characters especially Tom. It is Tera’s story but there was more that could have told about Tom. She is brilliant, even lyrical, in describing the joys and difficulties of life on the farm in Saskatchewan. The solution to the mystery was clever.