Now seventy-five, Clara comes to the rescue of another of Olshan's beloved characters, Will Kaplan of Nightswimmer, a cartographer based in Vermont, the site of his brother Daniel's fatal skiing accident. Clara is aware that to the outside world 'an elderly black woman and a young white man didn't add up,' but she and Will are tied into a bond as strong as any blood family's, and Will needs his old nanny's wit and heart more than ever. A friend who was supposed to have joined Will in Venice may have been caught in the catastrophic jumbo-jet crash off Long Island on which Will was originally scheduled to fly himself. Yet mysteriously the airline throws Marie Claire's very boarding of the doomed plane into doubt. So where is she? As the coundrum looms, Will's past loves and obsessions unfold with gripping intensity - the ghost of his brother Daniel, the aching memories of his former lover Peter. Joseph Olshan interweaves the narrative threads with spellbinding agility. He shows how people may choose families different to those into which they are born to fulfilling purpose, and how past personal failings, with the right kind of love, may be forged into redemptive new beginnings.