Canadian author's latest novel imagines a plot to make Canada the 51st state before Trump did

Well before U.S. President Donald Trump brought up the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state, the proposition was already fermenting in the mind of best-selling Canadian fiction author Louise Penny.

The Black Wolf, her latest novel in which the threat of annexation by the U.S. is a central plotline, was recently released and Penny, who previously turned down an invite to launch her latest Chief Inspector Armand Gamache story at the Kennedy Center in Washington, is remaining steadfast in her commitment to not tour the book in the U.S.

Here’s what to know.

The 20th book of the award-winning series picks up where Penny’s last book, The Grey Wolf, left off, with Gamache and his team exposing and averting a plot to poison Montreal’s water supply and arresting a man called the Black Wolf.

In the weeks that follow, the Sûreté du Québec detective comes to realize the person they apprehended was merely a red herring and the foiled attack was a “deliberate misdirection” ahead of “something deeper and darker” to come.

“Gamache and his small team of supporters realize that for the Black Wolf to have gotten this far, they must have powerful allies, in law enforcement, in industry, in organized crime, in the halls of government,” Macmillan Publishers said of the just-released novel.

Wary of those forces and going off a murdered scientist’s notebook and maps, they conduct a surreptitious investigation and uncover evidence of a cross-border scheme to leverage control of water systems and resources.

While the book doesn’t specifically refer Canada becoming the 51st state, Penny has said the notion is one of the book’s underlying themes.

“What happens when a nation that is losing a lot of these things, including water, sees how much we have? What’s it going to do?” she said to the Montreal Gazette in March.

“What would you do? Would you break into your neighbour’s home to save yourself and your family? Probably.”

Penny had maintained that the book was completed more than a year before Trump was elected and quickly began perpetuating the idea that Canada should become the 51st state for economic and security reasons to benefit both countries.

“I was afraid when I wrote it that I had taken it too far, that people simply wouldn’t follow me there, that it was unbelievable,” she told the Express in the U.K. last week.

“As it turns out, I may not have gone far enough!”

While much of the novel is set in Three Pines, Penny said “some pivotal scenes” take place in The Haskell Free Library and Opera House, the real-life library straddling the border between Stanstead, Que. and Derby Line, VT.

The facility was in the headlines in March when U.S. Customs and Border Protection decreed that only Canadian library members and staff could use the front door. All other Canadian visitors would have to go through the nearest U.S. border point or use a back door on the Canadian side.

The library has been fundraising to help pay for the renovations to the Canadian side, with Penny contributing $50,000, as reported by CBC .

Speaking to the Express, Penny said it was a “petty” for the Trump administration to attack “a little village library that is symbolic of the friendship and the sacrifices that both countries have made for each other.”

The author ended her North American book tour at the venue on Nov. 1 and 2. A portion of ticket sales will go towards the entrance renovations, which Penny will reportedly match, according to Vermont Public.

“If I had been writing this book now, I never would have gone there because it would have felt like I was ripping off a quite frightening political situation, certainly within Canada but also within the U.S.,” she told the Express.

The Haskell show is technically Penny’s only U.S.-based promotional tour date for The Black Wolf, having announced in March that she was cancelling future dates in response to Trump’s statements and the nascent trade war between the nations.

Not visiting the states for the first time in 20 years, she said in a Facebook post , was not meant to punish her American readers, but “about standing shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow Canadians.”

At the same time, she also announced said the book’s launch would take place at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, not the John F. Kennedy Center.

While it would have been “a real watermark” for her as an author, she changed her mind after Trump dismissed the national performing arts centre’s board of trustees and got himself appointed as the new chairman, along with a host of new board members.

“I don’t consider my stand to be political, although there’s certainly a political element to it,” she told CBC recently. “It’s a moral stand. If the Democrats had done the same thing, I would take the same stand. My not going isn’t going to change anything, but my going would be acquiescence.”

The 67-year-old Canadian fictional crime-mystery author is best known for her international best-selling Gamache series set in a fictional Quebec small town called Three Pines.

The Toronto native spent 18 years as a radio host and journalist for CBC before embarking on her quest “to write the best book ever” in 1996, according to Quill and Quire.

Almost 10 years later, her first novel, Still Life, won multiple literary awards and became a CBC movie in 2013. The Gamache series also found its way to the screen, with actor Alfred Polina portraying the protagonist in a short-lived Amazon Prime series titled Three Pines.

She is a recipient of the Order of Canada (2013) and the Order of Quebec (2017), where she lives in the Eastern Townships community of Knowlton.

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