Nightwatching

Tracy Sierra loved scary stories as a child, and as an adult, reading suspense and horror stories became a safe way for her to explore her fears and anxieties. Her first published short story, “The Burr,” is inspired by a collection of horror stories called The Burr Woman and Other Weird Tales, which she read as a child. As an adult, Tracy and her husband purchased a historic New England home that contains a secret room. Like Sierra, many homeowners discover these hidden chambers during renovations or repairs. Though most houses use the same floorplan, each has a unique story and mythology. New England farmhouses have also influenced local folklore and family traditions. For example, stories of hidden treasures, haunting apparitions, and inexplicable disappearances surface frequently, adding to these historic mansions’ sense of mystery and excitement. Likewise, false walls, underground basements, and attics were popular hiding locations, with access limited to unobtrusive doors or moveable panels. For Sierra, she began to contemplate the frightful darkness of these places and imagined the various secrets that they might be hiding. While writing the novel, she walked around her 300-year-old home and mapped out how the story would take place, including spending time in their secret space behind the fireplace.

However, her novel is inspired not just by her moody house, but also by the isolation she has experienced as a female. As a result, Sierra uses the landscape of a home to explore the deeper nuances of female vulnerability and the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her children from harm. Because Sierra’s husband is a doctor, she is often home alone with her children at night, and her own fears of facing a home invasion prompted her to write this story. Like her protagonist, Sierra has also experienced sleep paralysis and has had the terrifying sensation of a shadowy figure appearing in the corner of the room.

With the added context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sierra creates another layer of vulnerability in her protagonist, for she wrote the novel during the pandemic lockdown and said that her house, which once felt like a place of safety, became claustrophobic and confining. However, Sierra’s protagonist deals with more than the existential threat of caring for her children alone during a home invasion at night. In addition to capturing the cinematic tension of the protagonist’s plight, Sierra uses her character’s internal experiences to highlight women’s encultured tendency to engage in self-criticism and doubt. With no one else to corroborate the truth of her situation, the protagonist turns inward and uses logical thinking and strategic planning to protect her family.

When the police refuse to believe her testimony, the story transitions from domestic suspense to an excavation of the systemic problems in the justice system. In her pro bono work as a lawyer, Sierra interacted with female survivors of domestic abuse and became intimately familiar with people’s widespread reluctance to believe women’s descriptions of their most harrowing experiences. Sierra attributes this problem to misogynistic biases within law enforcement and the criminal justice system. However, she says that the problem stems from people’s fundamental desire to believe that the world is good and safe. Tracy Sierra's background and inspirations deeply inform her work, particularly the ways in which Nightwatching explores female vulnerability and isolation within a seemingly safe environment. (McNamee, Kai, et al. “Tracy Sierra’s Debut Novel Nightwatching Is a Chilling Thriller.” NPR, 6 Feb. 2024). This blend of personal anxiety, historical intrigue, and societal commentary makes her storytelling intimate and universally resonant.