Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former
Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace
he'd only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings he sits on a bench
holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. There is
a balm in Gilead, his neighbor Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket,
to make the wounded whole.
While Gamache doesn't talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells
him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home.
Failed to show up as promised on the first anniversary of their
separation. She wants Gamache's help to find him. Having finally found
sanctuary, Gamache feels a near revulsion at the thought of leaving
Three Pines. There's power enough in Heaven, he finishes the quote as he
contemplates the quiet village, to cure a sin-sick soul. And then he
gets up. And joins her.
Together with his former second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and Myrna
Landers, they journey deeper and deeper into Québec. And deeper and
deeper into the soul of Peter Morrow. A man so desperate to recapture
his fame as an artist, he would sell that soul. And may have. The
journey takes them further and further from Three Pines, to the very
mouth of the great St. Lawrence river. To an area so desolate, so
damned, the first mariners called it The land God gave to Cain. And
there they discover the terrible damage done by a sin-sick soul.
