Outskirts Press, INC.

Welcome to the St. Cross Choir

Having left her career as a newspaper reporter, newcomer Harper Henshaw seeks a fresh start in an offbeat mountain town in the rugged Sierra Nevada range. So she settles into the St. Cross church choir to prepare for a performance of Maurice Durufle’s Requiem. But illegal pot plantations and the activities of a drug cartel threaten the settlement’s seemingly idyllic life just as she starts to find her niche in the community of singers, parishioners and animal lovers.

Harper mentally distracted herself from their circumstances by allowing parts of the Requiem to run through her head. From a young age, she often had a tune stuck in her brain. Sometimes she even heard complex orchestral works or the operas that she had listened to over and over again on the family record player. The Germans call the phenomenon ohrwurm, meaning earworm. Supposedly one could shut down an annoying earworm by chewing gum or tapping. She found the descending notes of the “Agnus Dei” accompaniment particularly soothing. The Latin lyrics translated to “Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world: grant them eternal rest.” She felt the warm embrace of the gentle plea. The notes rose again, softly, at the end, and the piece concluded in a quiet unison.