From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in a mental asylum in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War.

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, Freedmen and runaways. Eleven-year-old ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year, arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a man they know only as Papa, an abusive war veteran who has forced himself into their lives. There, far from family, their 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 back story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the powerful woman who nurtures them; the story of ConaLee’s real father who leaves for the war and never returns, having suffered a life-threatening head wound which takes all memory of who he is or where he belongs.

In the asylum, a true refuge, a place built on the most modern of ideas—treat the mentally troubled as human beings—they slowly find new paths. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid so she can stay with her. Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the asylum—the mystery behind the man they call the Night Watch; the 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 brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds, and a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.

JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS is the author of Quiet Dell, Lark and Termite, Motherkind, Shelter, and Machine Dreams. She was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. She is also the winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.