Sanctuary
By Honor Jones
Riverhead, May 25, 2027
A taut, propulsive, one-sitting read about a wife and mother who, thrown into a strange and seductive world, tries to ignore what’s in front of her eyes.
Something is wrong in the narrator’s marriage. Something is wrong at work. But if she ignores the warning signs, maybe they will all go away.
Then comes the invitation to a summer at Sanctuary, and it’s too good to resist. An island refuge, free childcare, free housing, and a nice big raise. Her new boss, a “free thinking” pundit, has arranged everything. He’s obsessed with the culture war and enthusiastic about the real war, and he’s a lot of fun—if she can forget how much power he has. None of this really matters, though, because she brought her family to Sanctuary for one reason: to make her husband happy.
But as the glittering summer nights give way to muggy mornings, she becomes more and more disturbed. Her boss has a tenuous relationship with truth. Her husband is acting even more strangely than usual. As her world begins to unravel, the woman is faced with a dilemma: Should she labor to maintain the lies on which her life has apparently been constructed, or might the truth really set her free?
Wry, entertaining, and morally complex, Sanctuary skewers thought leaders with too much influence, busybody millionaires, and a society in denial about itself. It is a deft, biting, often hilarious indictment of our outrageous world.
Selected Praise
“An exceptionally moving novel. Jones takes her cues from writers like John Cheever, Richard Yates and Virginia Woolf, all masters of the repressed and unsayable. She covers the same material—the resentments and traumas that smolder in families wrapped in a suburban idyll—and with similar delicacy and humor. But Sleep also introduces a measure of optimism and generosity I found refreshing.”
—The New York Times
“Hypnotic… Jones crafts a nuanced and powerful exploration of a woman’s struggle to come to terms with her past… a masterpiece of carefully crafted perspective and tone…Margaret’s plight may feel tragic, but it’s transformed by sheer force of will—and Jones’s tempered prose—into something heroic, even hopeful.”
—The Washington Post
“Is it possible to have a childhood that is both picture-perfect and perfectly awful? And if so, how much of the baggage will you end up carrying 20-plus years later when you have children of your own? Honor Jones explores these questions in a quietly, profoundly beautiful new novel titled Sleep.” —NPR
“Jones’s prose is spare but effervescent, her evocation of childhood is pitch-perfect, and she handles delicate subject matters in adroit and surprising ways.” —Elle
“A haunting and beautiful novel about a desperate attempt to live in the present despite the tidal pull of the past… Incredibly moving.”
—Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Whistler
“SLEEP marks the arrival of an astonishing new voice in the world of literary fiction. Honor Jones writes with honesty and courage about life’s complications and contradictions. This novel is propulsive and funny and heartbreaking.”
—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs
“Heartbreaking, sexy, and full of humor . . . With elegant language and profound insight, Honor Jones transforms a story of family secrets into something utterly fresh, original, and exhilarating.”
—Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Anita De Monte Laughs Last
“A magnetic, breathtaking novel. I could not put it down and will be recommending it to everyone I know.”
—Cherie Jones, author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House
“Beautiful, bruising, incisive and heartfelt. Sleep takes a moving, maddening, funny and searing look at childhood, family and marriage. I adored it.”
—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark
About the Author
Honor Jones is a senior editor at The Atlantic, and previously at The New York Times. She lives in Brooklyn with her three children.
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