“I’ve never understood why people travel to see fall foliage. “It’s gorgeous.” She’s looking out the window of our rental car as I drive east along Autoroute 10, from Montreal to the village of Knowlton, both of us marveling at the sea of fiery maples and oaks on either side of the winding road. “No wonder Gamache fell in love with Three Pines,” Mom says. A Three Pines symbol in Knowlton / Photo: Ellen Carpenter
And, of course, I invited my mom along with me. travelers late last summer, I booked a trip. So as soon as Canada opened its borders to U.S. I knew it wasn’t a real place-not exactly, anyway-but I also knew it was very much based on the part of Quebec in which Penny has lived for the past two decades. With each book I finished, the idea of actually traveling to Three Pines became more and more imperative. I could close my eyes and see the three towering pines at the center of the village green, feel the cool autumn breeze on my cheek, smell the French bread baking at Sarah’s Boulangerie. During that isolating time, all I had to do was curl up on the couch and open a borrowed library book, and I was there: in the bistro with Chief Inspector Gamache, sipping a whiskey and speculating about his latest murder case helping Clara, the town’s kooky but immensely talented artist, make a salad for an impromptu dinner party at her house sifting through paperbacks in Myrna’s bookshop or listening to Ruth, the cranky old poet, recite a particularly cutting verse while petting her duck, Rosa, on a park bench. I resisted joining them until the summer of 2020, when, stuck in my tiny New York City apartment and needing an escape, I dove in. Rather, it exists in the mind of author Louise Penny, whose 17 mystery novels have inspired a following of millions of readers, including my mom and brother (and mother-in-law and aunt and…). A tiny village in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Three Pines doesn’t appear on any map.
My mom had been trying to get me to go to Three Pines for years. A mother and daughter journey to Quebec’s Eastern Townships
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