"This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc."--Title page verso

"Thirty-eight-year-old Jeremy Pauling has never left home. He lives on the top floor of a Baltimore row house where he creates collages of little people snipped from wrapping paper. His elderly mother putters in the rooms below. That is, until the fall of 1960, when she dies and leaves Jeremy alone. The following spring he takes in two boarders: a young woman and her child. Mary is unaware of how much courage it takes Jeremy to look her in the eye. For Jeremy, like one of his paper creations, is fragile and easily torn - especially when he's falling in love ..."--Book cover