THE WRONG CALAMITY

A successful business owner shares her stories of love, loss, and survival in this debut memoir.

Born “in the whoosh of baby boomers” in a Lafayette, Indiana hospital whose wards were “named with Bible references,” Jacobson spent her life breaking glass ceilings all over the globe as a successful business executive and management consultant. After moving up the corporate ladder in Tokyo, Jacobson returned to the U.S. to become the vice president of operations at Fidelity Investments. While she does chart her career’s trajectory, work takes a backseat in this deeply personal memoir, which focuses on the lasting impacts of abusive relationships. The book begins with Jacobson’s recollection of the summer before she entered sixth grade, with her mother frantically moving her children out of their New Jersey home to return to Indiana while her father was at work. This destabilizing, abrupt move not only severed the author’s relationship with her father and paternal grandmother, but also set the stage for the rest of the memoir. The spontaneity that initially sparked her attraction to her first husband, for instance, developed into an explosive volatility. Her second marriage was damaged by her husband’s PTSD, which was untreated. This frank depiction of ruined family ties and childhood trauma offers cleareyed insights into the human psyche and addresses why so many people find it hard to leave abusive relationships. Given Jacobson’s background as a business leader, her decision to write her memoir is particularly courageous. The author’s candor may be useful to readers looking to learn from Jacobson’s experiences and start making better decisions for themselves. Its inclusion of small group discussion questions (centered on decisions the author made inside her relationships) reflects the book’s emphasis on encouraging other women to think deeply about their own choices in finding or keeping a partner.

An affecting, personal exploration of toxic relationships.