Jayne Anne Phillips won the fiction award for “Night Watch,”
JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, and Quiet Dell.
This is a tale about a mother and little girl set in the Trans-Allegheny Neurotic Refuge in Weston, W.Va., after the Civil war broke out.
This book has received appreciation from various renowned author and critics.
Set in West Virginia during and after the Nationwide conflict, Phillips' book takes as given that servitude (slavery) was evil and the conflict was a need.
It focuses on lives destroyed by the contention and on the period's shockingly edified approach toward care of the deranged.
In 1874, following the Conflict, twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mom, Eliza, who hasn't spoken in over a year, show up at the Trans-Allegheny
The inescapable fancies of war and race ascend to the surface as we get familiar with their backstory: their trip to western Virginia; the vanishing of ConaLee's dad, who left for the conflict and stayed away forever.
In the mean time in the refuge, ConaLee claims to be her mom's servant; Eliza answers gradually to treatment.
Overall, Night watch is worth a read and surely deserves it too!