Add this WV Living Book Club read to your late-summer reading list.
If you’re still working through your stack of summer reads, let us suggest one more—and then you can join us for the fall WV Living Book Club meeting.
We can’t highly enough recommend West Virginia native Jayne Anne Phillips’ Night Watch, which won her the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. It’s set in the state’s famous Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in post–Civil War West Virginia. The tale follows pre-teen ConaLee as a resident at the TALA as her mother receives treatment following abuse by a Confederate soldier.
The book tackles hard topics like trauma and war and their effect on mental health—but if you’re expecting a story about overcrowding and institutional neglect, you’ll be surprised. It’s true that, when the TALA closed in 1994, it was one of a number of dated and underfunded mental health institutions across the U.S. where those conditions were common. Night Watch is about the facility’s optimistic early days and its use of the Kirkbride Method, which called for sunlight, fresh air, and compassionate care. This book might make you think differently about the place.
Read Night Watch, then join us for our September 8, 2026, meeting, where Phillips will join us by Zoom. Visit the WV Living website to register to attend the fall meeting in person or virtually and to have your copy of the book shipped right to your door.
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