Starlight on Willow Lake

Starlight on Willow Lake is the eleventh book in Susan Wiggs's Lakeshore Chronicles, set in the Catskills town of Avalon on Willow Lake. Faith McCallum, a widowed nurse raising two daughters and carrying her late husband's debts, takes a live-in caregiving post at the Bellamy estate.

Her client is Alice Bellamy, a wealthy woman left paralyzed by an accident and furious about it, who has run off every caregiver before Faith. Alice's son Mason has built a life in Manhattan and would rather manage his mother from a distance than face what happened to her.

The novel is a quiet, character-driven contemporary romance about grief, obligation, and the slow work of letting people in. Read in sequence it revisits the Bellamy family; it also works as a standalone.