Elisabeth de Mariaffi's new book The Retreat, a moody thriller set in a snowed-in arts centre in the Rockies, is one of this summer's top reads. Released in July to glowing reviews, the novel incorporates a number of topical themes — from extreme weather to domestic violence — packaged together in the form of classic whodunit à la Agatha Christie.

The Toronto-born author, who has lived in St. John's since 2012, spoke with Heather Barrett of CBC Radio's Weekend AM about the events, both personal and global, that inspired the book's themes, which are equal parts chill and thrill.

A: The Retreat is about professional dancer Maeve Martin, who heads to a secluded arts residency up in the mountains. By the time the story begins, she's come out of an abusive marriage. She's now a single mother, and for a number of reasons, the stakes have become really high for her professionally: she's in her mid-30s, which is already the end of a professional dancer's career. But her second child was also born by emergency C-section, so this has ended her performance career and what she plans to do with her two weeks and the residency is to try and really solidify an artistic vision for herself so she can create her own dance company.

At first everything seems like it's going to be great. A lot of snow comes in a little earlier than expected. It's kind of cosy. But she very quickly realizes that everyone already has their own allegiances and perhaps their own secrets. And this is where the weather really turns. The snowstorm becomes cataclysmic and an avalanche traps the artists at the retreat. When people begin dying, she realizes that someone there is not who they seem.

A: Well, I really did go to a retreat a number of years ago when I was just out of a marriage and I was a single mother. And, you know, I think it's been in my head ever since that time. So, you know, a couple of really salient points about the story really did happen.… Winter did come in really early, much earlier than anyone was expecting. We had snow. We had very cold temperatures. And this is something that I think about all the time: That when we have these weird climate events now, how it affects everything around us. And of course, the more removed we are from infrastructure, from society, the more we all feel that.

A: Obviously, I was thinking a lot about Agatha Christie when I wrote this book. I know and I love some of her amazing setups. So in this case, I think more about like Murder on the Orient Express. If you know that story, it's a moving train. Nobody can get on or off. But there have been a couple of stops. So there's a little bit of a possibility of someone from the outside coming in. Whereas the other story that I really thought of when I was reading this was Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which is about a group of strangers who get trapped on an island. And then again, terrible things start to befall them. So, for me, I think I was really interested in that small cast of characters where there's a real limit on who could have done this.

A: I do not [laughs]. I have a couple of friends who are dancers, one of whom is a professional dancer in Toronto who had the same series of events befall her. She had a C-section and had to immediately turn her career into something else. So that was really interesting to me. And another good friend of mine to whom the book is dedicated was a dancer when she was young and trained with Alvin Ailey. So I was very lucky to be able to have those conversations with dancers to think about how that works. And that is what I kept thinking about when I was writing — that she's somebody who is not only sort of trapped with her body as a career identity, but that she has this huge amount of power that she is used to harnessing. So what will she do with it when she gets into a dangerous situation?

A: Violence is so pervasive in women's lives that it would almost be insulting for me not to write about it. So in this case, she arrives at the retreat and she's already come through so much. So the stakes are already extremely high for her when she gets there before we get into the murder mystery piece of it. And I guess I just want to really honour that — how much it takes to navigate the world as a woman and how much that actually means navigating the threat of violence all the time.

A: One of the things I really love about St. John's is how close we are to everything. We have this beautiful sort of downtown urban feeling. But if I walk five minutes in the other direction from my house, I'm on a trail that feels like it could be in the woods. And so I think having both those things available all the time is just such a huge treat.

The Retreat is the third novel by Elisabeth de Mariaffi, after 2015's The Devil You Know and 2018's Hysteria. She also released a collection of short stories, How to Get Along With Women, in 2013.

De Mariaffi will appear at the 2021 edition of Writers at Woody Point, taking place in Gros Morne National Park Aug. 17-21.