Night Watch: A Novel
Jayne Anne Phillips"A tour de force." — Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, & namelessness haunt civilians & veterans, renegades & wanderers, freedmen & runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, & the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.
The omnipresent vagaries of war & race rise to the surface as we learn their story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War & never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.
Epic, enthralling, & meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war & its aftermath.
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JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark & Termite, Quiet Dell, & Night Watch. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship, & two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.