Also published as Night Watch, this Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Jayne Anne Phillips is set in the closing months of the Civil War and its aftermath in the mountains of West Virginia. Twelve-year-old ConaLee has effectively raised herself and cared for her mother, Eliza, who has not spoken in over a year, ever since a war veteran forced his way into their lives, made them call him "Papa," and terrorized them for more than two years.
When a plan finally frees them from him, ConaLee and Eliza are left at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, Virginia. To stay near her mother, ConaLee poses as her servant rather than her daughter. Inside the asylum, under the care of a remarkable doctor and among a cast of staff and patients — including the mysterious night watchman and an orphaned boy named Weed — Eliza slowly begins to heal, and ConaLee starts to imagine a life beyond survival.
Moving between the war's brutal recent past and the asylum's fragile present, the novel is a story of trauma, endurance, and the strange forms of sanctuary people build for one another.