Nightwatching

Published in 2024 by Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching uses the scenario of a home invasion to explore commonly held fears and how people respond to danger and trauma. By tracing one mother’s quest to defend her home and family, Sierra unearths layers of complexity as the protagonist’s past influences her struggle to protect her children and combat society’s desire to silence her as a woman.

As a practicing lawyer, Tracy Sierra has worked with domestic abuse survivors in the past and now practices corporate law. Her background in social work allows her to examine the psychological depths of her main character, whose struggles with trauma, fear, and resilience imbue the narrative with a sense of authenticity. Sierra was born and raised in Colorado and lives in New England in a 300-year-old home that she shares with her husband and two children. She began writing after her second child was born and is now working on her second novel, a survival thriller.

This guide refers to the 2024 Viking eBook edition.

Content Warning: Both the source material and this guide contain descriptions of traumatic experiences, emotional and physical abuse towards women, bullying of a person with a skin condition, and violent death.

Plot Summary

The unnamed protagonist is a mother. Before the primary events of the novel, she and her husband purchased their antiquated home in order to help care for her mother-in-law, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The home has undergone many renovations, creating a strange, labyrinthian feel in some parts of the house. One renovation created a hidden space behind the beehive oven; this space is completely sealed off and undetectable from the outside. Even though the protagonist’s relationship with her father-in-law is less than pleasant, she cared for her ailing mother-in-law until the woman’s death, with no help from her father-in-law. When she told him that his wife had died, he slapped her. Although her husband was angry with his father, he also wondered if his wife angered his father somehow. Even so, he promised her that he would have no further contact with his father. In a tragic accident, the protagonist’s husband fell and hit his head on the countertop and later died at the hospital. The protagonist subsequently experienced a deep depression. Her father-in-law interviewed with a local art gallery and suggested that his daughter-in-law killed her husband.

Although she and her husband always joked that the old house is haunted, the protagonist now notices strange occurrences after her husband’s death, such as items that unexplainably move or go missing. She is further disconcerted when her children report seeing a man watching them from the woods and believe that it is their father’s ghost. The protagonist begins experiencing sleep paralysis, and when she wakes up, she sees a man standing in the corner.

One night, the protagonist is home alone with her two children. After comforting her son in the aftermath of his nightmare, she sees a man who is not her husband ascending the staircase. She freezes in fear and watches the man continue up the stairs and enter her bedroom. Knowing that she has little time to act, she grabs her children and carries them downstairs to the hidden space behind the fireplace. While sealed inside, she begs the children to remain silent as they listen to the intruder moving around upstairs and descending the staircase to where they are hidden. He taunts them with sinister, twisted nursery rhymes, begging them to come out of hiding. The protagonist feels that she knows the man somehow, but in her intense fear, she cannot place his voice. The daughter says that he looks like the “Corner man” who watches her in her room at night. After this moment, the protagonist thinks of the intruder as “the Corner.”

The protagonist finally remembers that they met the intruder at a local café, of which he was the manager. At the time, the man acted inappropriately toward her daughter, but when she told her husband about the incident, he dismissed her as being overly sensitive. Now, she realizes “Corner man” is here for her daughter, and she must act. When the intruder goes to search the attic, the protagonist leaves the children in the hiding place and goes for help. She runs through the woods but is severely injured by a tree branch and the bitter cold. Bleeding and delirious with hypothermia, she knocks on a stranger’s door and begs for help. The neighbors give her a warm drink and dry clothes and call 911. The police sergeant arrives and helps to sort out the emergency; he is the same one who came when her husband died. Now, the protagonist tries to explain what has happened, but she is so severely injured and unwell that they struggle to understand why she has left her children locked under the stairs.

The police search the house but do not find the intruder. They take the protagonist to the hospital to be treated for her injuries, and they take the children to their grandfather’s home. When the protagonist is conscious, the sergeant questions her, making her recount every moment and every decision of the previous night. Specific details do not add up, and he doubts her story. Desperate to be reunited with her children, the protagonist complies with the hospital and police department’s protocol until she is released. The sergeant accompanies her home to continue their investigation. He reveals all the inconsistencies in her story, including the fact that the café she described has never had a male manager. Additionally, the hospital found alcohol in her blood, even though she claimed not to have had any drugs or alcohol that night, and she frightened her children when she forced them to remain in the hiding spot. He doesn’t believe her story and believes that her grief over her husband’s death is causing a mental health crisis. The children will not be allowed to return home until Child Protective Services conducts a full investigation and determines that her home is safe.

Left alone in her home, the protagonist plans to get her children back and prove that she is not lying. She hires a lawyer, cleans and organizes her home, installs a security system, and begins carrying a gun. She remembers that her husband installed a game camera in the woods, and when she reviews the footage, she learns that the “Corner” has been stalking their home for months. With proof of her innocence, she calls the police. The sergeant comes to the house and he reviews the footage, and he is shocked to realize that he was wrong. When they go inside, the Corner is there, and he bludgeons the sergeant to death and chases the protagonist into the woods. She shoots him with the gun, paralyzing him from the neck down.

She is reunited with her children, and they choose to remain in the home, believing that the house protects them from harm. The younger police officer visits her and explains that the Corner hid in the beehive oven, which explains why they couldn’t find him, and the alcohol in her blood came from the whiskey-spiked tea that her neighbors gave her. The police link the Corner to multiple crimes, including kidnapping and murder.