PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A NEW YORKER BEST
BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one of our most accomplished novelists a mesmerizing story about a
mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War—and a brilliant
portrait of family endurance against all odds 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.
