Night Watch

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and 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, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.

The omnipresent vagaries of war and 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 and 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, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.

Jayne Anne Phillips

Born and raised in small town West Virginia, Jayne Anne Phillips hitchhiked across the US with a woman friend when she was 19. At 26, a year out of grad school, she published Black Tickets, a first book of stories that influenced a generation of writers and won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Her first novel, Machine Dreams, chosen one of twelve Best Books of the Year by the New York Times. A second book of stories, Fast Lanes, preceded Shelter, in which a 60’s era Girl Guides camp set in a forest primeval is the backdrop for a sensual battle between good and evil. MotherKind follows Kate through the first year of her infant son’s life and the last year she shares with her terminally ill mother. Lark and Termite, finalist for the National Book Award, the NBCC Award, and the Prix de Medici Etrangers, traces the magical connection between a soldier caught up in the Korean War, the disabled son he will never know, and Lark, a young girl who believes her brother is deeply conscious of more than he appears to understand. Quiet Dell, a portrait of Depression-era America, follows the real life saga of a 1931 serial murderer who used matrimonial agencies to seduce wealthy widows, but takes as its heroines the three children of an Illinois widow and the female reporter who won’t stop looking for them. Night Watch, coming soon from Knopf, follows a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the apocalyptic, post-Civil War years in mountainous West Virginia. Phillips, the recipient of Guggenheim, Howard, and Rockefeller Fellowships, is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Letters.