How to Sleep at Night Summary, Characters and Themes
How to Sleep at Night by Elizabeth Harris is a quiet, perceptive exploration of adulthood, identity, and the quiet crises that unfold in the shadow of personal and political compromise. With three central characters—Gabe, Nicole, and Kate—this story unfolds through their entangled lives, where old desires resurface and core values are tested.
The novel brings into focus the ways in which relationships, ambitions, and self-perception evolve under pressure. Set against the backdrop of a controversial congressional campaign, Harris crafts a domestic and emotional landscape that feels both intimate and urgent. The novel is a study of what happens when private unease becomes public reckoning.
Summary
How to Sleep at Night follows three central characters—Gabe, Nicole, and Kate—each navigating personal dissatisfaction, compromised ideals, and unresolved relationships that come roaring back into their lives as a high-profile congressional campaign begins to shift their carefully constructed realities.
Gabe is a high school history teacher married to Ethan, a lawyer with political ambitions. Their relationship, once marked by shared ideals and deep affection, is now tense and uncertain.
When Ethan decides to run for Congress as a Republican, Gabe is stunned. He is a lifelong liberal, and Ethan’s decision feels like a betrayal of the values that brought them together.
Ethan assures Gabe he won’t move forward without his support, but Gabe knows that withholding it might permanently damage their relationship. After some emotional wrestling, he agrees—on two conditions: their daughter, Chloe, must not be used as campaign fodder, and Ethan must avoid aligning with extremist elements of the Republican base.
Ethan agrees, and with that, their fragile new reality begins.
Nicole lives in suburban New Jersey with her husband, Austin, and their children. She once aspired to a career in art history, but now she’s a stay-at-home mom, disconnected from the person she once hoped to become.
The life she shares with Austin feels dull and performative; their relationship lacks intimacy and understanding. When she sees her ex-girlfriend Kate, now a prominent political journalist, on television, it awakens something long dormant.
Nicole feels both regret and curiosity. She encourages Austin to accept a new job opportunity in New Jersey—partly because she wants to be closer to Kate, though she doesn’t fully admit this even to herself.
Kate is successful in her career, but emotionally unsettled. As a political journalist, she is entrenched in the relentless performance of punditry, though she prefers thoughtful writing.
When Ethan, her brother, announces his run for Congress, Kate helps him strategize his message, even though she’s conflicted about the direction his politics are taking. She also notices that Nicole has followed her on Twitter, which stirs up memories of their past—a passionate and imbalanced relationship in which Kate was emotionally invested while Nicole kept her at arm’s length.
They reconnect slowly, with tentative online messages that soon grow into something riskier and more intense.
Gabe struggles with the campaign. He finds himself increasingly uncomfortable attending fundraisers and political events filled with donors whose values he cannot tolerate.
Though he supports Ethan personally, he feels like a prop in a political narrative that doesn’t reflect who he is. His private life becomes inseparable from Ethan’s public persona, and he begins to feel erased.
Still, he tries to create a meaningful home life with Chloe and maintain some stability amid the political storm. His resentment grows as Ethan’s campaign adopts more extreme positions, even while Ethan insists he is trying to “change the party from within.”
Gabe doubts this logic but holds on—for Ethan, for Chloe, and perhaps for the life they once imagined.
Meanwhile, Nicole and Kate begin an affair. For Nicole, it is a way of reconnecting with a part of herself that she had buried under motherhood and marriage.
With Kate, she feels alive and desired in a way she hasn’t in years. The affair is passionate, but not without guilt.
Nicole is aware that she is betraying her family, but also feels that she has long betrayed herself by giving in to a life of quiet submission. Their connection deepens, yet Nicole’s inability to fully commit to Kate becomes a point of tension.
Kate finds herself slipping back into emotional patterns she thought she had outgrown. Her affair with Nicole is intoxicating, but also destabilizing.
She has built a life of success and self-possession, but Nicole’s presence shakes her. At the same time, Kate is dealing with her own ethical compromises at work.
Her involvement in Ethan’s campaign has led her too close to her subject, resulting in professional consequences. She is demoted after it becomes clear that her objectivity has been compromised.
This loss hits her hard, as her career has long been her refuge from personal turmoil.
Gabe eventually reaches his breaking point. At a campaign event, he is forced to listen to bigoted donors and extremist rhetoric without reacting.
Ethan’s speech that evening blends conservative tropes with a softer message of inclusion, based on his identity as a gay man. The crowd loves it.
Gabe is horrified by how persuasive and effective Ethan is, and it fills him with fear. That night, drunk and furious, Gabe tweets a sharp critique of Ethan’s campaign and its associations, distancing himself from it entirely.
The post goes viral, creating a media firestorm that damages Ethan’s candidacy and turns Gabe into a reluctant symbol of political dissent within a marriage.
Nicole’s affair is discovered when her young son stumbles upon evidence. She comes clean to Austin, but his reaction leaves her feeling more alienated.
Instead of anger or heartbreak, Austin responds with indifference—believing, perhaps, that an affair with a woman isn’t “real” in the same way. This erasure of her identity wounds Nicole deeply.
She leaves him, seeking solace with Kate. But Kate, reeling from the fallout in her own life, turns her away.
She is not willing to be hurt again by Nicole’s indecision and emotional fragility. The rejection forces Nicole to confront the damage she has done and the parts of herself she still refuses to acknowledge.
Ethan’s campaign collapses under the weight of scandal and controversy. Yet, despite the betrayal he feels over Gabe’s public denunciation, Ethan chooses to stay by his side.
Their relationship is battered but not broken. They begin to rebuild, slowly, with a deeper awareness of the cost of ambition and the limits of accommodation.
Months later, Nicole reaches out to Kate again, hoping for a fresh start. Kate agrees to meet, but cautiously.
She has begun to move on—working on a book, dating again, and prioritizing her independence. She no longer sees herself as someone waiting to be chosen.
Their reunion is tentative, marked by an understanding that things may never return to what they were, but that something new—honest and mutual—might still be possible.
By the novel’s end, the characters are not fully healed, nor are their conflicts entirely resolved. But they have faced themselves honestly.
Gabe and Ethan continue together, having survived the wreckage of a deeply public moral split. Kate reclaims control over her life, having found a way to separate her self-worth from her career or past relationships.
Nicole, though still uncertain, begins the long process of rebuilding on her own terms.
How to Sleep at Night is a quietly powerful exploration of the compromises we make, the selves we lose and try to retrieve, and the small, defiant acts of choosing honesty—even when it’s almost too late.
Characters
Gabe
Gabe emerges in How to Sleep at Night as a figure of intense internal conflict and moral tension. As a high school history teacher and a principled liberal, he finds his identity increasingly fractured by his husband Ethan’s decision to run for Congress as a Republican.
Gabe’s struggle is not only political but deeply personal, caught between his loyalty to Ethan and his revulsion toward the ideological shift Ethan adopts. This rupture in values forces Gabe into a psychological space of quiet rebellion—he sets boundaries, resists being turned into a campaign symbol, and finds meaning in small personal rituals like parenting their daughter Chloe and grading student essays.
However, this veneer of composure begins to crack as Ethan’s campaign leans further into far-right rhetoric. Gabe’s moral backbone remains intact even as he compromises for the sake of family, but eventually his disillusionment crescendos into public outcry.
His viral Twitter denunciation of Ethan’s endorsement from a bigoted far-right figure is a moment of rupture that irreversibly alters their relationship and campaign trajectory. Gabe’s character arc is marked by a haunting sense of complicity and the painful realization that love can be weaponized against one’s own values.
Despite the devastation, Gabe remains emotionally resilient, finding space for forgiveness and reconciliation, but only after confronting the ugly truths of his marriage and public life. He becomes a symbol of the emotional cost of political sacrifice and the price of staying true to one’s conscience.
Nicole
Nicole’s character is steeped in emotional ambiguity, a woman teetering between the domestic life she has built and the more authentic version of herself she abandoned. Once a sharp, art history scholar with a vibrant intellectual life, Nicole is now submerged in suburban motherhood and a tepid marriage to Austin.
Her dissatisfaction is quiet but all-encompassing, manifesting in disengaged routines and a growing sense of invisibility. Her reconnection with Kate, her former lover, jolts her out of this stupor, reawakening a sensual and emotional clarity that has long been dormant.
The affair is not just physical—it’s a reclamation of agency and an assertion of a selfhood that predates motherhood and marriage. Nicole’s betrayal of Austin is deliberate and layered; she does not absolve herself but rather views her affair as the culmination of years of small self-betrayals.
The fact that Austin reacts with passivity—minimizing her affair with Kate due to its queer nature—further enrages Nicole, underscoring the erasure of her identity. Her children, particularly young Sarah and Henry, remain the emotional anchors in her life, representing both her devotion and the emotional cost of choosing herself.
Nicole’s character is deeply complex, driven by longing, regret, and a slow-burning rebellion against the life she let calcify around her. By the end, she seeks reconnection with Kate not as a desperate grasp at the past but as a tentative step toward a more honest and self-defined future.
Kate
Kate is the emotional and ideological bridge that links the fractured worlds of Gabe and Nicole. As a political journalist and Ethan’s sister, she navigates the murky waters of public ethics and private yearning.
Her public persona is that of a sharp, composed pundit, but privately, she is weathered by emotional betrayals and professional burnout. Her past with Nicole is both formative and wounding—she was once dismissed by Nicole in a relationship that was emotionally asymmetrical, and that rejection left scars that shape her adult detachment.
Despite her rising career, Kate is not immune to the allure of unfinished business. When Nicole re-enters her life, she is pulled back into a relationship that reactivates old wounds but also offers fleeting intimacy.
Her affair with Nicole becomes a sanctuary from political cynicism and a reminder of her own vulnerability. Yet Kate is not blind to the dangers of entanglement.
Her professional integrity is compromised by her proximity to Ethan’s campaign, and when the scandal explodes—both in her personal and professional life—she chooses distance. She retreats not out of cowardice but as a protective act, a declaration that she will no longer be a footnote in someone else’s self-discovery.
By the novel’s end, Kate has grown into a more grounded and guarded version of herself—still open to reconnection with Nicole, but only on terms that preserve her independence. Her journey encapsulates the challenge of balancing intimacy with self-preservation in a world where emotional transparency is a liability.
Ethan
Though not one of the three central protagonists, Ethan’s presence in How to Sleep at Night is a gravitational force around which the others orbit. A former Democrat turned Republican congressional candidate, Ethan represents the seductive and corrosive power of political ambition.
On the surface, he is charismatic, intelligent, and loving—particularly in his roles as a father and a husband. Yet beneath that charm lies a deep vein of opportunism and denial.
His ideological shift is portrayed less as a principled transformation and more as a strategic rebranding to gain political traction. Ethan’s ability to justify aligning with extremist rhetoric, and to seek endorsements from bigots under the guise of inclusion, is deeply unsettling to those closest to him.
Gabe, in particular, becomes a casualty of this ambition, forced to reconcile the man he married with the political actor he has become. Ethan’s love for Gabe and Chloe appears genuine, but it is often subordinated to the demands of public image and success.
His forgiveness of Gabe after the viral Twitter outburst suggests emotional depth and a desire to preserve their marriage, but it also reflects his capacity to compartmentalize—loving Gabe even as he betrays everything Gabe stands for. Ethan’s character is a study in contradiction, embodying the dangerous elasticity of identity when power becomes the ultimate goal.
His arc compels readers to consider how far one can drift from their principles without losing the essence of who they are.
Themes
Political Compromise and Identity Fragmentation
In How to Sleep at Night, political compromise functions not as a strategic maneuver but as a personal battleground that threatens to erode selfhood and moral clarity. Gabe’s trajectory illustrates how aligning with political ideals he does not believe in—albeit for the sake of love and family—fractures his sense of identity.
His husband Ethan’s decision to run as a Republican, aided by a platform that welcomes extremist endorsements, creates an ideological chasm between them that Gabe cannot cross without betraying himself. Gabe’s gradual withdrawal from authentic expression—his tight-lipped silences at fundraisers, his performative support, and eventual emotional breakdown on social media—highlights the psychological toll of suppressing political and moral values to preserve relational harmony.
Even Ethan, though charismatic and intelligent, manipulates his identity for political gain, becoming a symbol of how queer identities are often weaponized or sanitized for broader acceptance. Kate’s presence as a journalist further complicates this theme.
She facilitates Ethan’s narrative shift while privately scorning the dishonesty of modern politics. Her ethical collapse—covering her brother’s campaign while sleeping with his political liability—underscores how personal loyalties blur professional boundaries.
This theme echoes throughout the story, showing how politics is never just public theater but a force that penetrates relationships, reshapes private lives, and forces characters into uneasy alliances with versions of themselves they can barely recognize. The cost of these compromises is not just career damage or scandal, but the slow loss of conviction, the fraying of relational trust, and the unsettling realization that being politically agreeable often means being personally untruthful.
Queer Desire and Erasure
Desire in the novel is not simply a longing for connection, but a yearning for recognition that is constantly thwarted by societal expectations and internalized repression. Nicole’s story epitomizes this conflict.
Though she once experienced a passionate and intense relationship with Kate, she buried that part of herself beneath the roles of mother and wife. Her suburban life, marked by a cold marriage and mechanical intimacy, becomes a quiet form of erasure, where her queerness is not attacked but slowly dissolved into irrelevance.
The moment when she confesses her affair with Kate and Austin reacts with subdued disappointment rather than outrage is particularly devastating. His response implies that her betrayal is less significant because it involves a woman—thus reducing her identity to an anomaly or a passing deviation.
Nicole’s rage and grief stem not from the affair’s fallout but from how her queerness is belittled, made invisible by the very person who shares her bed. Kate, on the other hand, has built a life around her queerness but still feels the shadow of unrequited longing and emotional manipulation that marked her early romance with Nicole.
Their reconnection rekindles a fire that’s never gone out, but also reopens wounds that never healed. The novel shows that queer desire exists not just in romantic moments, but in the ache of being unseen, the need to be taken seriously, and the painful work of reclaiming a self that was once surrendered for the comfort of others.
This theme exposes the violence of soft erasure—how silence and dismissal wound just as deeply as rejection.
The Cost of Emotional Withdrawal
Across the intertwined narratives, emotional withdrawal functions as both a defense mechanism and a corrosive force. Gabe, Nicole, and Kate all retreat from emotional vulnerability at different points, and each withdrawal leaves behind a fracture.
Gabe distances himself from Ethan’s campaign not just politically but emotionally. His decision to set boundaries around their daughter’s involvement is an attempt to maintain a sense of agency, but it also creates a wall between them that becomes harder to scale.
His refusal to fully express his pain until it explodes online suggests how emotional withholding can distort into performative outrage when left unacknowledged. Nicole’s emotional withdrawal from Austin began long before her affair.
She numbs herself through routines and white lies, crafting a semblance of stability while quietly imploding. Her detachment is not coldness, but self-protection—a way to survive a life she never actively chose.
When she finally breaks, her choices are messy and impulsive, reflecting years of pent-up dissatisfaction. Kate, by contrast, has turned emotional withdrawal into a professional posture.
Her sarcasm and detachment serve as armor in a world where intimacy has repeatedly failed her. But when Nicole returns, her defenses falter, and the emotional charge of their reunion reveals how withdrawal cannot prevent hurt—it only delays it.
This theme illustrates that emotional avoidance, though often driven by fear or fatigue, creates a landscape where resentment, miscommunication, and misunderstanding flourish. The novel suggests that vulnerability, though risky, is the only way to sustain connection in a world where repression only breeds quiet devastation.
The Legacy of Unresolved Love
Unresolved love operates in the novel like an echo chamber, reverberating through every adult decision, career move, and failed compromise. The past never rests easily for these characters—it lurks, shapes, and intrudes.
For Kate, the lingering hurt from her relationship with Nicole haunts her success, coloring how she views intimacy and trust. The unfinished nature of their romance—its abrupt end, lack of closure, and power imbalances—leaves her both yearning and guarded.
Her career may have advanced, but emotionally she remains tethered to a past that was never fully understood or explained. Nicole’s reentry into Kate’s life reopens those unresolved dynamics, and even as they attempt to reconnect, the unresolved pain muddles their intentions.
Nicole’s longing is not just for Kate, but for a version of herself that felt alive and authentic. Yet because she never processed that earlier break, her return is fraught with contradiction and regret.
Gabe, too, experiences a kind of unresolved love—not romantic, but ideological. He loves Ethan deeply, but the man Ethan is becoming stands in opposition to the man Gabe first fell in love with.
His struggle is with the memory of a shared political idealism that no longer exists, and the absence of that former connection leaves him emotionally unmoored. This theme reveals that unresolved love—whether romantic, familial, or ideological—is not passive.
It shapes behavior, informs identity, and leaves characters vulnerable to the weight of unfinished emotion. Without resolution, love remains a ghostly presence, shaping futures with the gravity of what might have been.
Motherhood and Ambivalence
Motherhood in the novel is neither sanctified nor demonized; it is portrayed as a deeply complicated role that encompasses joy, guilt, resentment, and fierce protectiveness. Nicole’s relationship with her children, particularly Sarah and Henry, is sincere and loving, yet filtered through the fog of her emotional discontent.
Her maternal care is genuine—she listens, nurtures, and pays attention—but it is also accompanied by a constant sense of self-loss. She feels subsumed by the responsibilities of motherhood, as though her identity has been flattened into her role as caretaker.
Her moments of tenderness are punctuated by frustration and longing—not to escape her children, but to rediscover herself as someone other than their mother. The scene where she pleasures herself in her car rather than return to her marital bed captures this tension perfectly: the desire to reclaim autonomy without hurting the people she loves.
Gabe’s approach to fatherhood is different but equally nuanced. His bond with Chloe is grounding and meaningful, especially in contrast to the chaos of Ethan’s campaign.
Painting with Chloe, walking with her, creating routines—these moments offer him clarity and purpose. Yet even Gabe uses parenting as a shield, a way to avoid confronting deeper marital conflicts.
Motherhood, as explored through Nicole, is never reduced to stereotypes. It is a site of ambivalence where love and loss coexist, where the joys of connection are often shadowed by the fear of erasure.
The novel treats motherhood as an evolving identity, one that is as fraught with contradiction as it is filled with grace.