Healing and Harm in The Gamache Books

What compels me is the grace that Penny writes about in the characters struggling to heal.

Hi friends,

We hope everyone is recovering from the excitement of last week — a new book and a new TV series. This week, we have an essay from Adam Shields, a book blogger and spiritual director, about trauma and healing in Louise Penny’s boooks.

Next week, we’ll host a discussion thread about A World of Curiosities. We’re eager to hear what you all think!

— Elizabeth & Aya

“I've been desperately unhappy in my life." Her voice was quiet. "Have you, Chief Inspector?"

It wasn't a response he could have predicted. He nodded.

"I thought so. I think people who have had that experience and survived have a responsibility to help others. We can't let someone drown where we were saved.” (p80)

In this exchange between Inspector Gamache and Three Pines resident Emile Longpré from “A Fatal Grace,” we’re reminded of the old trope, “Hurt people, hurt people.” This adage is very real and an essential part of the methodology of solving homicides in the Gamache series. But Penny moves beyond that writing of emotional feedback loops in both directions (hurting people hurt people, and healing people seek to heal others). Early in the series, Gamache seeks to train and replicate the healing in his own life. Later books spread that healing through Beauvoir, Lacoste, Ruth, Clara, Stephen, and others. 

Virtually all characters in Penny’s book—whether they are short-term or main characters—are pushed to explore their wounds, their experiences. Peter Morrow’s mother was emotionally and physically withdrawn because of a physical disability that she refused to discuss or address. In response to that wound, Peter wounded his family, particularly his sister, which harmed her relationship with her father. Ruth was jealous of her friend’s dating relationship, and she helped end that relationship, which created a wound in her soul that harmed Ruth’s ability to form relationships. Oliver hid his sexuality from his father, and over time he learned to hide many other things (and lie to everyone). 

While not explicitly addressed in the series, the tension between systemic and individual woundedness is ever-present. Old hurts fester until they find a release. In some of Penny’s storylines, untended wounds eat away at the goodness and beauty of a person, leading their wounds to spill over into the community.

But for some, there is still the possibility of repentance and change, even in the end. 

The Walking Wounded 

What draws me to the Three Pines series is not that characters have wounds; most people have some level of woundedness. What compels me is the grace that Penny writes about in the characters struggling to heal. In A Great Reckoning (#12), there is a quote about how I think that Louise Penny handles woundedness or trauma:

“At the very least, the cadets need to understand that we all have burdens, don’t you agree, Commander? Some so weighty we carry them our whole lives. They can blight our very existence, or they can make us stronger. They can make us bitter or teach us compassion. They can drive us to do things we never thought ourselves capable of. Wonderful achievements, like becoming Chief Inspector and Commander. Or horrific things. Terrible dark deeds. Maybe Michel Brébeuf isn’t the only object lesson. Maybe they can learn from you too, Monsieur Gamache.” (p283)

Gamache is not a perfect character, but throughout the books, he struggles to process his wounds to be the man he needs to be for those around him. Following the attack in the factory, he attends informal therapy sessions with Myrna and prioritizes processing his trauma formally with department counselor. He wants to be a good husband, father, boss, and friend. He wants to escape the difficult role before him, but he can see how unaddressed wounds will fester and spread. 

Young people, primarily the recruits or younger officers of Sûreté du Québec, are perpetual characters in the series because it is part of Gamache’s nature to teach, sometimes through example and sometimes more explicitly, as in this quote toward the end of A Great Reckoning,

“There is always a road back. If we have the courage to look for it, and take it. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know.” He paused again. “I need help. Those are the signposts. The cardinal directions.” p374

Those words are addressed to four students subjected to abuse that had become part of systemic mismanagement. Without Gamache addressing the system of abuse in the police academy, individual work toward healing is limited because it would only address their individual wounds instead of confronting the systemic cause of the wounds that eventually spread to others. Penny — and Gamache — recognize this. The Inspector fires the corrupt teachers at the academy and changes policies. He works to fix the broad issue and the individual.

That is the tension in both the Gamache series and in real life. Harm is both individual and systemic. We need to work to end the systemic realities to the best of our power. But we also need to address our personal wounds, so we do not inadvertently perpetuate harm. Part of Peter Marrow's tragedy is that he could not address his wounds and stop them from harming others. His woundedness harmed his wife, Clara, and damaged their marriage. 

Individual and Systemic Trauma 

The symbiotic connection between individual and systemic is impossible to trace within the series without spoilers. If you have not read the series and do not want any spoilers, you should stop reading now. 

In Still Life, the first book of the series, we hear of the Arnot case, although it takes several books to understand what impact that case has on the rest of the series. Gamache took a personal individual stand against the systemic rot within the Sûreté du Québec. He brought down leadership that was systematically trying to abuse First Nations tribal members to create an ideological split so that the First Nations people could be radicalized into terrorists, which would allow the members of the police to gain credibility for authoritarian power and personally enrich the leadership.

That original rot within the system was exposed, but other members of the Sûreté du Québec took advantage of the corruption to abuse their own authority. Gamache returns as the head of the Sûreté du Québec Academy because he sees the Academy producing cruel and self-interested officers. The second in command at the academy picks out members he can manipulate and then hold in his power.  In his efforts to purge the system of its last corruption Gamache works inside and outside the rules, potentially putting individuals that have previously been harmed by the systemic rot in danger. 

Penny pulls at this thread of Gamache’s self-justification over the following several books. In The Kingdom of the Blind, Gamache works with a young officer who had been abused as a child. The officer wants to protect a woman whose husband is abusing her in ways he could not protect his mother when he was a child. Gamache tries to instruct the officer to work within the legal system to avoid becoming an unaccountable vigilante. But at this point, Gamache is on leave pending the investigation of his own work outside of the legal system to stop drug cartels that had corrupted the legal system. 

With any evaluation of ethics, there must be discernment about where the particular lines between ethical and unethical lay. Gamache thinks his working outside the rules is justified but regularly investigates his motivation and actions. Gamache’s trauma informs his understanding, but he is still susceptible to being blinded by it (as is a thread in The Madness of Crowds). The young officer justifies his willingness to beat the abusive husband to protect the abused wife. Penny is clear that the legal system is far from as protective as it needs to be. But Gamache is concerned that an officer willing to use violence or other abuses of power for what they perceive as good will, over time, allow for self-justification more clear abuses of power. 

Trauma Stewardship 

Inspector Beauvoir, Gamache’s second in command through most of the series, and eventually his son-in-law had his own series of traumas, which were compounded by an addiction to opiates that he originally started taking recovering from serious gunshot wounds. The distortion of reality from the drug addiction and trauma caused Beauvoir to believe that Gamache had abandoned him to die. That distorted reality created a relational rift, exploited by Gamache’s enemies in the Sûreté du Québec.  They intentionally supplied Beauvoir with drugs and triggered his trauma to both hurt Gamache, and consolidate abusive power within the corrupted areas of Sûreté du Québec. It was only through a reconnection with grace and love that Beauvoir could break free of the power of drugs and trauma. 

The longer the series goes on, the more the main characters need to be self-reflective because of their increased exposure to the trauma of murder and corruption and the wounds that occur within the fight. I have recently started reading the book Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. The author is a social worker addressing others in helping fields who are regularly confronted by the trauma of those they work with. The inspectors in the homicide department certainly fall into that group, but so do teachers, health professionals, and psychologists like Myrna. Part of the point of Trauma Stewardship is that without being open to the pain of others, people in helping professions can’t help. At the same time, if those people in the helping professions are subsumed in the pain, trauma, and wounds of those around them, they also cannot help. There is a constant push and pull to be open to pain and protect yourself by seeking internal healing. 

The Madness of Crowds 

In The Madness of Crowds, Haniya Daoud, a fictional Noble Peace Prize nominee, visits Myrna. Daoud is from South Sudan. She was kidnapped and raped and beaten and enslaved. But she also freed herself and others through violence. There is a short section where Daoud and Isabelle Lacoste exchange the stories of their traumas. One of the results of that exchange is that the reader is reminded that the evil of the world is not just “out there”; it is also “here.” Ewen Cameron, one of the real people referenced in Madness of Crowds, tortured patients in his research in cooperation with the CIA to understand mind control, behavior modification, and torture techniques. Cameron’s acts resonated for generations.  The violence and evil were “out there” and “here.”

Where I think there is room to explore, both in fiction and in social science research, is the impact of societal wounds. There are hints in The Madness of Crowds and other consciously post-covid fiction. Societal wounds or societal trauma is not just the reality of horrible events but society breaking down in response to those horrible events. Gamache experiences this with the abandonment of nursing homes and society turning its back on the weaker members of society out of fear. 

Wounds impacting individuals, systems, and society are not interchangeable in how we address and understand them. But harm is created in all. The wounds that impact, and are replicated, are part of being a human character in the world of Inspector Gamache. Penny has created such a compelling world in part because she has grounded that world in both the every day and the extraordinary wounds that are common to what it means to be human. The ways that we find grace is to directly look at the wounds and do what it takes because we have been saved from our own wounds. That is what Gamache leads us toward.

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Adam Shields writes about books at bookwi.se and is a spiritual director in Georgia.

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Notes from Three Pines is a short-run newsletter run through Substack celebrating and exploring Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache books. Love Gamache or Ruth’s duck Rosa? Reply to this email, leave a comment or email notesfromthreepines@substack.com.

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