Tom Lake: A Novel
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.
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Community Reviews
Listening to Lara recount her days at and surrounding Tom Lake was much like grabbing a well worn quilt and listening to your own mother. The perfect amount of nostalgia, surprises, secrets, and the lesson of how small decisions can change the trajectory of our lives. Meryl Streep was the perfect choice and I am already looking forward to my next time visiting this book. A beautiful way to end the summer.
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