Protecting One’s Castle
Tracy Sierra (’09) incorporates lessons from her legal career in her debut thriller novel.
Protecting One’s Castle
Tracy Sierra (’09) incorporates lessons from her legal career in her debut thriller novel.
While following pandemic guidelines to shelter in place, Tracy Sierra was surrounded by inspiration: getting acclimated to a three-hundred-year-old home with many noises and secret spaces. She was often home alone with her young children overnight while her husband, a doctor, worked. The combination of an antique house, anxiety about a potential intruder, plus her decade of legal practice equipped Sierra with a unique perspective ripe for storytelling.
In Sierra’s novel, Nightwatching, a mother and her two small children must defend themselves against a home invader during a nor’easter blizzard.
The thriller has been widely celebrated by critics and was selected as the Spring Read Winner of the Jimmy Fallon Book Club. The Record met with Tracy to learn more about her legal and writing careers. (No spoilers, we promise.)
Q&A
The Record: Can you share your career path with us? What led you to law school?
I was an English and history major in college. If you’d asked me as a kid, what I wanted to be, I would have said, “a writer.” But, I was a responsible person; my mom had been sick for a long time, and it was clear that I was going to need to self-support. It was a logical next step to go to BU Law. I lost my mom a month before I started law school, so it was an emotionally difficult time my first year. I really enjoyed my time there; I made great friends and had amazing professors.
I experimented in different areas of the law, including the Civil Litigation Clinic, which was fantastic—and one of the inspirations for Nightwatching. I also interned for a summer at the US Attorney’s Office.
Even though I found that work to be super valuable, it was very difficult for me. I took the asylum cases very personally. My clients were all women, and they were all survivors of violence and abuse.
After graduation I went into the proverbial Big Law, working in corporate and mainly doing private equity work. I wanted to continue helping survivors, so I tailored my pro bono activities to represent women’s shelters with corporate law needs such as grants and governance.
The Record: Can you tell us more about the inspirations you drew from your time in the civil litigation clinic to inform Nightwatching?
While in the clinic, I was working with law enforcement officers who approached cases from what I call “the place of doubt,” condescension, or a wanting to deny the truth.
Conversely, when working in the prosecutor’s office, I saw incredible law enforcement officers who interviewed survivors of crimes with sensitivity—it taught me the spectrum of law enforcement. Targets of crime are treated in different ways by different law enforcement, which is a big part of Nightwatching.
As human beings, we don’t want to believe in evil. We don’t want to believe bad things can happen to good people. Family members of survivors of violence would even deny very visible evidence because it was painful to admit that they had failed to protect. There are a lot of reasons for disbelief.
In Nightwatching, the characters are put in a difficult position as to what to believe. I have a lot of sympathy for the law enforcement within the novel trying to puzzle out what happened, even though they’re far from perfect. I gave them a difficult task [laughs].
[The clinics] gave me a certain amount of exposure to how systems can fail you. They are human creations, and they’re not perfect. Sometimes studying the case law, you don’t see that.
The Record: What made you decide to start writing fiction?
I had been working for about eight years at the point where my husband and I were financially stable, and I could take a step back and stay home with my kids.
My mom had her own business and was a successful, wonderfully ambitious human being. When she was sick and we were talking about any regrets, she said she wished she had spent more time with my sister and I during the stage when we were little, that she felt she had missed out on that. While as a kid, I was always proud of her, and now, working the hours I was as a mother of young children, for the first time I understood her regret.
I liked being home with my kids more than I thought I would. But I’m still my mother’s daughter and needed something else, frankly, because it was strange. As a lawyer, you are being paid for your time. But, small children have zero interest in what you’re saying. It was jarring to go from this very adult, serious world to that. I realized that for my own self, I needed an adult outlet. And it was naturally writing.
I wrote a book that ended up getting me into a mentorship program, which was wonderful. Then I began Nightwatching in 2020, when I was locked in the house. Once I got an agent and we sent a version out to publishers, within three weeks I signed with Penguin Random House.
Every journey is different for every writer. The first book I wrote, I had more than one hundred rejections, which is not unusual. It’s a very long process with a lot of luck and timing involved.
The Record: The title of your book insinuates a theme of surveillance. What made you want to explore that?
The idea of an intruder in the home is a primal and universal fear. While in law school, we studied castle doctrine and the history of defending your home from trespassers.
In the earliest version of these laws, and in some states still, somebody doesn’t even have to get into your home, and you can attack them. It’s unusual in law that that exists, but that makes logical sense to many people because that fear is in all of us. That’s supposed to be our safe place, that’s where we sleep, it’s where we’re most unguarded. We all know that break-ins happen, and it’s scary to all of us.
The story explores the themes of human monsters and what it means to protect.
The Record: You mentioned a writing mentorship – was there anyone during BU Law that served as a mentor?
The clinical program folks were very present for the students and understanding of the emotions. The hardest thing for me was witnessing a deserving asylum client not being granted asylum due to an interview scheduling error.
I remember talking to Judy [Clinical Associate Professor of Law Judith Diamond] about the fact that these systems are not perfect. Things are not fair in life. She talked to us about how we were dealing and made sure the client had a support system. She was very emotionally available. It gave me a certain amount of exposure to how systems can fail you. They are human creations, and they’re not perfect. Sometimes studying the case law, you don’t see that.
The Record: Is there anything else about the writing process or your law school experience that you would like to share?
When folks have found out that I’m a lawyer by trade, they ask “Why are many lawyers authors?”
It’s threefold: First, we’re exposed to a lot of interesting stories.
And second, especially as you proceed through your career, you get less intimidated by a massive project. Five-hundred-page documents are normal.
Finally, being an attorney with clients who trust you, no matter what type of law you do, you get insight into the human condition and different types of personalities in a strangely intimate way.