New thriller predicted Trump's '51st State' plans for Canada

Canadians were rightly shocked when President Trump appeared to declare economic war with his punitive tariffs, but for writer Louise Penny it was a depressing case of life imitating art

- By Jon Coates

BESTSELLING author Louise Penny feared she had gone too far when writing about a plot to add Canada to the United States of America.

This was 18 months before Donald Trump was elected for his second term as US President and sparked a trade war with America's closest ally.

In her prescient 20th Chief Inspector Armand Gamache thriller, The Black Wolf, which is out now, powerful forces on both sides of the border conspire to threaten Canada's future as an independent nation.

Louise says: "This was written 18 months ago, before Donald Trump was elected for a second time, but the issue is there are elements (in my book) that want Canada to become the 51st State.

"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.

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

She adds: "There are also some pivotal scenes in The Black Wolf that are set in The Haskell Library, a free library and opera house, which actually exists.

"It's a little village library and opera house, an oddity, that sits right on the border of the US and Canada, between Vermont and Quebec.

"There is a dotted line through it where the border does actually exist.

"So there are some scenes set there and then it became a flashpoint for the Trump administration, because they decided they would close this library to Canadians, which was such a petty thing to do.

"Who attacks libraries? Well, I'll tell you... petty despots attack libraries, a little village library that is symbolic of the friendship and the sacrifices that both countries have made for each other.

"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 US."