ALTERATION

Impediments, Book 1 of The Sonnet Trilogy, told how, in the fall of 1953, Gerard, scion of a wealthy Swiss banking family, crossed the Atlantic to attend college in the United States leaving behind his wife Beatrice at university in Zurich with his cousin Paul. In doing so, he changed his life, those of the two left behind and the lives of Sarah and Jack, American friends he made at college. Alteration, Book 2, is concerned with the relationship between Sarah and Jack and their respective relationships with Jack's best friend, the recently divorced Gerard, and with Sarah's best friend and roommate, Lily, an American of mixed-race. As in Book 1, there are questions of love, ambition, gender roles and sex to be faced. With the coming of Lily in the fall of 1955, race is added.