Adriana gets a job sewing for Edith Head at Paramount' s costume department in the early 1940s. Adriana falls in love with a bit player named Rose and the two move in together. Living with a woman goes unnoticed as most people presume they are only roommates. But as Adriana's career blossoms, society and life start to interfere and Adriana makes decisions that affect three generations of her family.
1998: Adriana's granddaughter Laura has left LA on the heels of a failed relationship and a subsequently failed career in film development. She moves in with her grandmother in Baltimore to find some time and space to think. The problem is she always spent time here with her dearest friend and cousin Becca, who died suddenly in a car crash, leaving her 13-year-old daughter, Lizzie. Adriana, in her eighties and wrestling with the past is now suddenly responsible for Laura and Lizzie.
In this compelling literary family drama, three lives twine together in the past and the present to take a closer look at how family, wanted or not, makes up who we are.
Praise for Alterations: "Kate Maruyama invents a magical refracted Hollywood history and a lusty, coded story of forbidden love in Lotusland." --Matt Tyrnauer, director of Victoria's Secret: Angels & Demons and Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
"A gorgeous, exquisitely plotted, humane, warm, real, and unpredictable book." --J Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, The Lager Queen of Minnesota
In this stunning literary novel, Alterations, Kate Maruyama has stitched together a multi-generational tapestry of women with entwined journeys of big love, profound loss, and the wonder and allure of cinema. As this superbly-designed story unfolds through time, locations, and from regrets to hope, it wraps around the reader's heart. This is a deeply moving, dazzling, and delightful read. --Toni Ann Johnson, author of Light Skin Gone to Waste winner of the Flannery O'Connor award, Remedy for a Broken Angel, and two time NAACP Image Award nominee
"Alterations is flat-out wonderful. A warm, sensitive and beautifully-written novel about complicated families, thwarted love, and the heartbreaking difference between old movies and real life." -- Peter Blauner NY Times bestselling author of The Intruder and Picture in the Sand
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