"In the title novella, a very young man dying of AIDS joins his friend in fashioning a story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, set against the yearly march of the twentieth century, whose horrors and miracles their story echoes. In "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American composer John Morton," a Canadian university student visits Washington, D.C., and experiences the Vietnam War and its aftermath through an intense musical encounter. In "Manners of Dying," variations of a warden's letter to the mother of a man he has just executed reveal how each life is contained in its end. And finally, in "The Vita Æterna Mirror Company", a twentysomething grandson learns the alchemy of mirror-making and the value of memories, but learns too late the importance of the present moment."--Back cover.