Starts:

Friday June 27, 2025

    7:00 PM

Jayne Anne Phillips’ historical epic set in a West Virginia lunatic asylum is a story of the persistence of life and the power of family, from the author of Black Trinkets and Machine.

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.

Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.