Our Last Resort: A Guest Post by Clémence Michallon

Edge-of-your-seat intrigue ensues when a woman’s body is discovered in the desert. Two ex-cultists vacationing at the hotel become entangled in the mess. Oscillating between their cultist past and the present moment, this adrenaline-fueled ride is great for summer. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Clémence Michallon on writing Our Last Resort.

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Sixteen years ago, I traveled with my parents to a gorgeous hotel in the Utah desert. It was incredibly remote, so much so that we almost never found it.

The hotel was far from the highway, tucked at the end of a thin access road that was devilishly hard to spot. The three of us managed to miss our turn multiple times. We tried again, and again. We stopped to ask for directions. Every time, our destination eluded us.

Aware that we would eventually run out of gas and daylight, we considered retreating to the nearest motel. It was during a last-ditch effort, the three of us combining our skills (me talking to the hotel on the phone, my father driving, my mother keeping her eyes peeled for the access road) that the desert relented. Finally, our hotel offered itself up to us, and we made our triumphant arrival, elated and disoriented and carrying twelve slices of marble cake in a Walmart container (it had been a long, random road trip).

During our stay, an eerie feeling settled over me. As long as we remained within the hotel’s confines, we were safe—nay, pampered. There was plenty to eat and drink. Our rooms were air-conditioned, our pillows always fluffed. But all around us, the desert stretched, hot and harsh and inhospitable. “At night, you might see a coyote,” said a hotel employee, pointing outside my bathroom’s first-floor window.

I was eighteen. I lived in Paris, France. I had seen so little wildlife that the sight of a mere squirrel thrilled me. And this place had coyotes?

When the time came to write my second crime novel, my mind traveled back to the desert. What if two characters came to a very similar hotel hoping for a wholesome vacation, only to find themselves trapped in the world’s most gorgeous cage? Because that’s the thing about an ultra-discreet luxury resort tucked away in the desert: You can’t leave. The hotel has your car. You can’t walk away. Stay outside too long and you’ll bake or evaporate. And there’s the small matter of the coyotes, too.

The two characters at the heart of Our Last Resort, Frida and Gabriel, come to Utah hoping to repair their sibling relationship. Everything is going well, until a female guest at their hotel turns up dead, evidently murdered, and Gabriel becomes the prime suspect.

I knew that the novel’s setup would force Frida to reconsider everything she thought she knew about Gabriel, the person she loves most in the world. But I needed those two to share a special bond, beyond normal family ties. I wanted the possibility of Gabriel’s guilt to feel truly life-altering for Frida. I found myself thinking: what if Gabriel and Frida had grown up in a cult together? And what if that upbringing had left them thinking that they needed each other in order to survive?

I adore psychological thrillers for the ways in which they force normal characters into extraordinary situations. Frida and Gabriel both feel entirely human to me, and they bring that humanity to a series of truly dire circumstances. I loved getting to know them, and I hope readers will too.