Shortly before her death in October 1992 Laurie Colwin completed her novel A Big Storm Knocked It Over. She had spent an idyllic summer writing, and the pleasure she took in it lends a radiance to every page of this book, her most deeply felt and enchanting exploration of how men and women stubbornly stake their claims to love - romantic, familial, and between friends - in a world that often seems to do its best to thwart it.Rather late into her thirties, Jane Louise Parker has just gotten married - and to a man whose native decency leaves her almost breathless at her good fortune. Teddy's inclination to occasional brooding silences is really only a small flaw, and Jane Louise always has the distraction of her work as a book designer in a small and very tony publishing house - even if her job all too often seems to involve avoiding becoming the latest conquest of the firm's lewdly charming art director. With her best friend, the flamboyantly talented (and dressed), interracially involved Edie, Jane Louise patiently waits to become pregnant, wondering all the while if a baby will supply the rootedness that still seems to elude her.When that longed-for child makes its appearance, it brings a transformation of the Parkers' lives that is as unexpected as it is rapturous, and provides Laurie Colwin with an ideal opportunity to apply her characteristic wit and intelligence to the dizzying experience of motherhood - and to the more unusual forms of families we make for ourselves - in the late twentieth century. A poignant farewell from a much-loved writer, A Big Storm Knocked It Over reminds us again of the singular pleasures afforded by the novel of manners - and of the rare gifts that Laurie Colwin brought to it. Read Less