Clara, heroine of "Clara's Heart" and the former nanny of Will Kaplan, another of Olshan's beloved characters from "Nightswimmer", comes once more to his rescue: Marie Claire, Will's friend and mother of his former lover, may have been caught in the catastrophic jumbo-jet crash off Long Island. Yet mysteriously the airline throws her very boarding of the doomed plane into doubt. So where is she? As the conundrum looms, Will's past loves and obsessions unfold with gripping intensity - the ghost of his brother Daniel, killed in a fatal skiing accident, the aching memories of Peter. 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 now more than ever. Joseph Olshan interweaves the narrative threads with spellbinding agility. He shows how people may choose families different to those into which they are born, and how , through love, past personal failings may be forged into redemptive new beginnings.