A Big Storm Knocked It Down by Laurie Colwin
This literary novel, published in 1993, is the last book Colwin wrote. It follows Jane Louise Parker, from just after her honeymoon through the next few years in her life. It has themes of friendship, family (including found family), and self awareness.
Jane works for a small publishing firm in New York City, as a book designer. She has several co-workers that we see through her relationships with them: Sven, the art director; Adele, the department secretary; and publishing agents Dita and
Jane's husband Teddy is a child of divorced parents, and he was raised by his mother, in a house in a small town in New Jersey that has been in the family for generations. Teddy is a chemist and product designer for a small company developing natural cleaning products. His best friend Peter is someone he has known from childhood, who now has an organic farm.
Jane has moved a lot as a child and has no real sense of belonging. Her mother has remarried, to a wealthy man, following Jane's father's death. Her best friend is Edie Steinhaus, her former college roommate. Edie is a caterer and pastry chef and an outlier in a family of male lawyers. Her business partner Mokie Frasier is a man she met at cooking school in Paris. He is tall, black, and also Edie's life partner, something her family tried to ignore.
As we see Jane's life, we see her insecurities, her passions, and her relationships. With both of them having little in common with most of their family members, they have created a substitute family with Peter and his wife Beth, and Edie and Mokie.
This is a character driven novel that lets us into Jane's life completely. I loved it.
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