"Above the Thunder" Renee Manfredi

I was gathering up books for a course I am teaching on the Mathematics of Art, and I thumbed through some of my sketchbooks, which also contain journal entries.  I ran across the following.  I don't remember reading this book, and that is one reason I started this blog, so I can refresh my memory about my reads.  From the journal entry below I am guessing that I didn't finish "Above the Thunder, so I'm putting it on my Arkansas sojourn reading list.  (Note that in the journal entry below I call the book "Beyond the Thunder.")

This is the typical sort of writing I do when I am reading.  I will write on whatever is handy, often in the back or front pages of the book, but in this case in my sketchbook.  Usually the writing is about how I am feeling at the time of the reading and the feelings are too strong to ignore and must be written down for the emotional release.  In this case, I am frustrated about my choice of career, and wonder if I should have started writing at an earlier age instead of going into mathematics.

The Jane referred to is a professor of mathematics at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.  I, almost certainly, purchased the book at Gulliver's Books in Fairbanks, the only place I buy fiction when I am in Alaska.

From the sketchbook:  18 July 2005  I'm reading "Beyond the Thunder" by Renee Manfredi.  This was her first novel.  Jane (from UAF) knows her because she was at UAF for awhile.  Occasionally Manfredi writes a sentence that I covet but other times she uses a sentence to connect seeming non sequiturs.
In the bio at the front of the book it says she was published in the Iowa Review, Alabama Review, etc., etc., etc.  How can I possibly ever think I could publish when I don't have the same connections, the same experience with writing communities or the same knowledge base?
The book brings together various characters - a 53-year-old woman, her granddaughter, whom she first meets when the granddaughter is 10 years old, and a man who is HIV positive.  Somehow they all get together and move into a house, just the sort of thrown together family that I would like, but I can't see how it will endure.  Of course, the granddaughter will grow up, and the man is likely to become seriously ill.

That is all that was written.  Now that I am a 53-year-old woman, I think I'll read (or reread) the book to see how I feel about it now.