The Winter People takes place in a fictional quintessential small town in rural Vermont called West Hall. Vermont is a state in the Northeastern United States, located along the Canadian border south of the province of Quebec. In an average year, Vermont might receive between 7.5 and 12.5 feet of snow. In the novel, the characters live in an isolated farmhouse three miles outside of town. They are forced to reckon with the extreme winter weather which creates a sense of danger, urgency, and claustrophobia.

The Washburne family live as homesteaders on this land. Homesteaders are people who live self-sufficiently off-the-grid. The Washburnes grow their own food, do not own a computer or cell phone, and homeschool their eldest daughter. Alice and James Washburne were in part inspired by Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing (1954). The Nearings were highly-educated leftist vegetarians, who left their lives in the city to live self-sufficiently in a rural area. Similarly, the Washburnes met at Columbia University and gave it up to live a “hippie utopian dream” (109). In the 1960s and 1970s, Vermont was a popular location for idealistic hippies seeking to live off the land. The Washburnes fit into this mold and so their atypical lifestyle does not raise any suspicions among the locals.