This latest novel by Alice McDermott gets four stars only because Charming Billy must remain, for me, her finest work. Were it not for my devotion to it—which I recall reading, and sharing, and loving, with my late mother—then this gorgeously understated, quietly powerful glimpse behind the wimples and veils of nursing sisters, into their hearts and their good works and their values, would receive a virtual crown of stars. I particularly loved the character of Sister Illuminata, whose vocation ironically places her in the dark basement of a Brooklyn convent, where she ceaselessly toils to bring cleanliness, freshness,light and life to her kindred sisters and to the poor, the sick, and the orphaned. The ways in which she and her colleagues befriend and shape the lives of three families, none of whom are forsaken in the ninth hour or in any hour, are beautiful, wise, and wholly human.