When domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty first addressed the media after the death of her son Luke she said, ‘I want to tell everybody that family violence happens to everybody. No matter how nice your house is, how intelligent you are. It can happen to anyone, and everyone.’

This idea is brought to life in Elizabeth Harrower’s 1966 novel The Watch Tower, republished recently as part of the Text Classics Series. Protagonist Laura is a young middle-class woman who aspires to be a doctor. She isn’t the stereotyped ‘battered woman’ and her experience represents the pervasive nature of domestic violence; it can happen to anyone. And it does, on an average of two women per week in Australia this year.