The Retreat

May 31, 2021
Maeve Martin, the heroine of this uneven thriller from de Mariaffi (The Devil You Know), was a modern dancer before having two children with her abusive husband. Now widowed, she leaves the children with her mother and books two weeks at the High Water Center for the Arts, an isolated lodge in the Rocky Mountains, where she’ll have uninterrupted time to focus on the dance company she hopes to start. Instead of finding peace, though, Maeve is thrown into a maelstrom after an avalanche cuts off the center’s power and communications. Later, filmmaker Anna Barthelmy is found dead in the snow, and Maeve doesn’t believe the death was accidental. Maeve gambles that staying behind with the center’s director rather than joining the others on the 10-mile trek to the nearest town is her best bet, but danger looms either way. The center’s lack of emergency preparation, among other elements, strain credulity, but the final chapters offer genuine suspense. Readers will feel rewarded in the end. Agent: Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic Literary.