Nell Bane takes her ghostwriting skills to western Massachusetts to help Daniel Shirley write a memoir. Shirley believes he was the last person born in the Swift River Valley before it was drowned to create the Quabbin Reservoir, and he maintains that his life has been marked by this distinction. As Nell writes, she is drawn into the sad and amazing history of the Quabbin project that shifted the residents of Prescott, Dana, Greenwich and Enfield out of their homes in the beautiful Swift River Valley so the land could be flooded to create a water supply for Boston, eighty-three miles to the east. Nell gradually becomes aware that her mild and gentle client, Daniel Shirley, is obsessed with his legacy-a legacy of bitterness-and she comes to believe he might take drastic revenge upon the peaceful waters of the Quabbin Reservoir. The Ghost Lays The Ghosts To Rest is the fifth and final book in the Nell Bane series