On April 10, 1912, seven musicians board the "Titanic" to play on the maiden voyage of the world's largest passenger ship. They are a motley crew who come from all corners of Europe, little knowing that the next five days will be their last. In the course of that fatal voyage, their life stories gradually unfold. Each musician embodies one part of the mosaic that is Europe on the edge of the century, and their pasts mingle with the present while the "Titanic" steams inexorably to its destiny. Their stories are told as the ship steams westward. Each is a tale of doomed love, and doomed art. Every one of the characters has a broken heart, and everyone is a wrecked prodigy, talented enough for greatness but laid low by fate. A vividly imagined, gripping novel about the ship's orchestra on the "Titanic" doomed to play to the very last.