Author Louise Penny says the fictional village of Three Pines from her Inspector Gamache crime novels isn’t copied on the real-life Knowlton in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, still she is thrilled that tourists from around the world are drawn to the quaint spot that inspired her and that had been her home for years.
“I love it,” she says. “This is a place that embraced me. I wouldn’t want to be overdramatic and say it saved me, but there are moments in my life when I needed that company, the friendships, the welcoming spirit, and so it is nice to give back.”
In honour of a new book that will be released later this month, several restaurants and cafes in Knowlton have a limited-time offer: they have put dishes on their menus drawn from food written throughout the pages of Penny’s series.
At a microbrewery called La Knowlton co., a black forest ham, caramelized onion and brie sandwich is on offer as part of what the town has called The Nature of the Feast, a play on words on the title of one of Penny’s books, The Nature of the Beast.
“People come in and say where is the Louise Penny menu item,” says co-owner Nicholas Allen. “She has brought a lot of business to the town.”
Some of the residents of Three Pines are also believed to be inspired by some of the locals, and Allen jokes he has suggested to Penny that she should include a “wacky brewery owner” in one of her future books.
Penny is about to launch her latest novel titled The Black Wolf.
“It’s the 20th in the Inspector Gamache series,” she says. “Can you believe it? The twentieth in twenty years, it makes sense. When I wrote the first one titled Still Life, I would never have dreamed there would be 20, I didn’t think there would be two books."
Penny sips a latte at Three Pines Cafe, one of her recent endeavours. The coffee shop is in the basement of a library, it has two fireplaces, imitating the bistro she imagined for her books.
“It is like sitting here where the line between fiction and fact disappears,” she says. “What was created in my imagination has come to life in the cafe, but also in the different restaurants around here.”
The plot of The Black Wolf that also emerged from her imagination, could appear to have been ripped from the headlines.
“I write about some entities pushing for Canada to be the 51st state,” she says. “Now this was long before Trump started talking about it, and I remember thinking ‘Have I jumped the shark? Have I gone too far? Will anyone believe this? Turns out maybe I didn’t go far enough.”
Though her books are translated in several languages, and sold internationally, most of Penny’s readers are in the United States. She says she has great affection for Americans.
But earlier this year, she announced that she would not travel south of the border to launch her book.
“Every other book I have gone through the United States and Canada,” she says. “I was invited to launch this book at the Kennedy Centre, and when I received that invitation I was thrilled. But when Trump did his coup at the Kennedy Centre, I said ‘well I can’t’. And things just got worse, that whole 51st state, the tariff war, an assault on our economy that lingers to this day, and I said to my American publisher, I can’t do the states.”
She is soon setting out on a book tour with stops in several Canadian cities, with the final stop in Stanstead, Quebec at the Haskell Library and Opera House that straddles the U.S.-Canada border.
“We have intentionally ended the tour at the Haskell as a statement,” she says. “The statement is that we are friends, we are allies, we have worked together hand in hand for generations, we have family connections, we have deep friendships that cannot be questioned and that cannot be broken asunder despite what some people are trying to do.”
There has been blowback, including fans saying they would no longer read her books.
“Of course there is going to be,” says Penny. “To think I would say that I am not going to step into the United States because of the Trump administration and not think that some readers are going to say ‘well goodbye’ would not be realistic.”
But she says many have supported her decision, that she describes not as a political statement, but as a moral one.
And as she walks along a street in Knowlton on a beautiful fall day, many of those supporters are thrilled to have a chance encounter with the author.
A woman from North Carolina stops her to take a photo, describing her admiration for her work and her principles. Another woman holding a baby with adorable big cheeks hugs her tightly and becomes emotional as she tells Penny she has read all her books. Nearly a dozen fans from across the country stop to ask her to sign a copy of one of her books.
“It’s amazing and joyous to have sat alone in my kitchen writing, and now this,” she says. “In writing about this place we have created a community.”
She says physically, Three Pines doesn’t exist, that if it does, she hasn’t found it. But she says several villages in the Eastern Townships region have inspired her with a welcoming, accepting spirit.
“When you know that goodness exists, which is what I personally strive for in real life and in the books,” she says, “then you are in Three Pines.”
