About this item
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing 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, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt 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 neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.. The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their backstory: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee's father, who left for the war and never returned.
About the Author
Jayne Anne Phillips is an American novelist and short story writer. Phillips graduated from West Virginia University, earning a B.A. in 1974, and later graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Phillips has held teaching positions at several colleges and universities, including Harvard University, Williams College, and Boston University. She is currently Professor of English and Founder/Director of the Rutgers-Newark Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program. In 1976, Truck Press published her first short story collection Sweethearts, for which Phillips earned a Pushcart Prize. Lark & Termite, her fourth novel, published in 2009, was selected as one of five finalists for the National Book Award in fiction. Phillips' works have been translated and published in twelve foreign languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Bunting Fellowship from the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. Phillips and her husband, Dr. Mark Stockman, have two sons.
