The 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center anchor the book's story arc and profoundly affect some of the characters. But Echo Terrace's transformation from multiculti Shangri-La to cynical real estate opportunity is under way well before Al Qaeda coats it with inches of toxic dust. Rinaldi vividly depicts Vogel's and Farro Fescu's very different recollections of WWII, Nora's trips to the rapidly vanishing rainforest, and (in the only tale that seems somehow out of place in the narrative) Tattafruge's abduction by mysterious agents who force him to perform cosmetic surgery on a man whose face looks disturbingly familiar. These and other stories convincingly and in gorgeous prose embody the book's two main points: first, that from the perspective of history, September 11 was just one in an ongoing and seemingly endless series of such man-made calamities; second, that in the midst of all the horrors, the rivers of Time and Life still carve great magical islands for us on their way to their perpetual deaths in the sea.

This strain of hope is conveyed best in Rinaldi's depictions of love, both calm and carnal. The prostitute Maria Gracia, tending the dying Harry Falcon (her client of many years), reflects on her past loves: "Life is good, she thinks. Life is always beginning. If life is not good and not always beginning, then it's bad, and who needs that?"