Finished: Night Watch (Jane Anne Phillips) This year's beautifully written Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction takes us to the backwoods of West Virginia, right after the Civil War. ConaLee is a 12 year old girl who has become responsible for the upkeep of the house and caring for her three younger step-siblings ever since a man who calls himself Papa invades their home. ConaLee's mother, Eliza, is really married to her true love, and ConaLee's father, Ephraim Connolly, who has gone off to fight for the cause of the North in the war. He manages to stay in touch until he is severely injured, barely surviving a horrific head injury, but forgetting who he is and everything about his life. The kind doctor that makes sure he lives is named Dr. O'Shea, and when Ephraim is well enough, he's intregal in helping with and encouraging other victims of the war. Seeing what a good person he is, Dr. O'Shea says he'd be honored if Ephraim takes his name, John O'Shea, and then recommends him to a highly rated asylum, established by an honorable doctor, and still run by that doctor's honorable nephew, Dr. Story. Eliza and ConaLee live just down the ridge from Ephraim's adoptive mother, Dearblah, who has become like a mother to Eliza and grandmother to ConaLee. Despite the fact that Dearblah has an incredible sixth sense and medicinal abilities, she's no match for the interloper who takes over Eliza's home, raping her at will, impregnating her with three children, and treating ConaLee like a slave. Eliza has become mute and nearly unresponsive, which has left ConaLee responsible for the house and also very vulnerable, as she ages. Thankfully the interloper doesn't ever sexually abuse ConaLee. He does tire of the whole situation eventually. He is very greedy and truly wants whatever "class" and money the homestead can bring him. He ends up making ConaLee pawn off all her younger siblings on neighbor people who have sadly lost children in the war, and he sells the house and everything Eliza owns to go off and hobknob with and/or con the richer class. He takes ConaLee and the still mute Eliza to within walking distance of the nearest asylum, dressing Eliza in some stolen fine clothing and instructing ConaLee to tell them she is her mother's nurse, and that her charge is a genteel lady. ConaLee doesn't realize that she is also being dropped off permanently. When she and her mother finally make it to the asylum door, the sun has set and they bang on the door. Answered by a tall and stern looking man known as the Night Watch, he takes pity on them and receives them into the asylum despite not having the authority to do so. Eliza improves drastically under the care of the kind Dr. Story, and the book unfolds in such lovely prose as we get to know the characters and all their relationshiops and stories. I'll not be spoiling the ending of this book, but will only say that characters like ConaLee, Dearblah, the Night Watch, Weed (the young orphan taken in by the cook), Dr. Story and Eliza herself are all compelling and I really rooted for them all to have happy endings amidst a few surprises!