This quotation comes from Louise Penny’s twelfth book in her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, A Great Reckoning: A Novel.

In this twelfth book, we find Gamache as the head of the Surete Academy unraveling the mystery of another death while also investigating a mysterious map from Three Pines. The quoted passage is a conversation between Gamache and one of the professors at the Academy, Hugo Charpentier.

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“Oui. It’s because maps are magic.” If he didn’t have the Commander’s full attention before, he did now. Gamache lowered his tea to the table and stared. “Magic?” “Yes. They’ve become so mundane we’ve forgotten that. They transport us from one place to another. They illuminate our universe. The first maps were of the heavens, you know. What the ancients could see. Where their gods lived. All cultures mapped the stars. But then they lowered their sights. To the world around them.”

-A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny