-"The Boys in the Trees," by Mary Swan; Holt Paperbacks ($14)

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Mary Swan's "The Boys in the Trees" is a bracing, elegiac novel that ponders the effect of a violent crime on the inhabitants of a small Canadian town in the late 19th century and beyond.

Much as a stone dropped in a pond creates widening ripples of varying intensity, Swan portrays a single, desperate act and examines its impact on those who are brushed by a wavelet, as well as others whose lives are altered by their proximity to the violence.

Swan, the author of the well-received collection "The Deep and Other Stories," employs several narrators and multiple points of view to relate this tale of multiple murder. The characters include the victims; Alice, a guilt-wracked teacher who unknowingly releases one of her students to the murderer; Eaton, another student in the classroom; Abby, a young woman who becomes a photographer's assistant; and a doctor who has ties to one of those killed and is called upon to serve at a public execution.

Through this prism, the details of the shocking crime gradually emerge, much like the process of developing photographs that Abby learns in the darkroom from Sam, one of the town's photographers.

"All the time Sam was telling me this, I was watching his hands, rocking the tray, watching how the plate began to change. Parts of it turning black, but slowly, so slowly, and then other parts, lighter shapes, as if an invisible hand was drawing it, as if, somehow, it was drawing itself."

Some characters seen out of the corner of an eye turn up later to offer first-person accounts. Others appear, only to depart abruptly. No single perspective dominates. This story is related by the individual members of a Greek chorus, but William Heath, a proud British immigrant who plays the pivotal role in the crime, remains the most elusive. Swan offers only a quick - but indelible - glimpse into Heath's mind as a frightened, dreaming child who finds refuge in a treetop and yearns for a better life, a house and a family. Otherwise, we see him only through the eyes of others.

Late-19th-century England is depicted here as a harsh and often brutal place of tenements, disease and blunted opportunity. It's no wonder Heath is enticed by the promise of Canada and pressures his wife, Naomi, to emigrate with him.

"I said I had no intention of living in a cabin in the woods," Naomi says, "but he said I had the wrong idea, that we could go to one of the towns or a city, smaller than here and cleaner, everything new, even the air."

Life in Canada turns out to be hard, too. Money is scarce, and Heath encounters troubles that force his family to relocate several times. Canada provides some nasty surprises for other new arrivals in the area where the family finally settles, especially the young girls who have been gathered up from dysfunctional families in cities like Liverpool and shipped to Canada wearing shifts imprinted with "New Home" to work performing farm chores, or worse.

In a world where death can come swiftly from falling into an icy river or more slowly from an untreated gash sustained during a drunken stumble, characters hold onto a few precious mementos and talismans: a book of drawings, a child's note, snippets of hair tucked into a locket, a broken knife, a single bone button. But their significance is lost to others.

As Swan explains, the reasons behind some things may never be known.

"People like to talk in this town and they have no trouble finding things to talk about ...," Abby muses. "The wildest stories floated around and maybe one of them was true or maybe none of them were, but I never did see that knowing a reason would make any difference."

That sad sense of mystery shimmering throughout "The Boys in the Trees" keeps Swan's characters lingering in the mind long after the novel is finished.