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Night Watch cover

Night Watch

Jayne Anne Phillips

1

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12

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Night Watch

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Night Watch won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. A mesmerising 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, trauma haunts civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-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 war veteran who has forced himself into their lives. There, far from family, a beloved neighbour, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives. The twin horrors of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their history: 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 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.

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Publisher
Fleet
Year
2024
ISBN-13
9780349727790
Genre
FictionCrime & Thriller
Topics
Civil War aftermathMother-daughter relationshipTrauma and healingMental asylum lifeFamily endurance

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