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

Alterations is the story of Adriana, a young woman who works for Edith Head at Paramount's costume department in the early 1940s. She falls in love with a bit player named Rose and the two move in together. As Adriana's career blossoms, society and life interfere and Adriana makes decisions that affect three generations of her family.

1998: Laura, Adriana's granddaughter has left LA on the heels of a failed relationship and a career in film. She moves in with her grandmother in Baltimore to find some time and space to think, but her beloved cousin dies leaving her daughter, Lizzie, thirteen, who also moves in with them.

You can't choose your family, but you can't escape them either. Three lives twine together in the past and the present to take a closer look at how family, tight or not, makes up who we are.

Kate Maruyama was raised on books and weaned on movies in a small New England town. Kate Maruyama is the author of Harrowgate, Bleak Houses, and The Collective and her novella Family Solstice was named Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine. Her short work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and winner of the Uncharted Short Story Prize. She served on the working Board for Women Who Submit, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles.