Book Notes | ‘Tom Lake’
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett is set in the early summer of 2020 at a cherry orchard on the shores of Lake Michigan. The three daughters of the main character, Lara, have returned home during the COVID-19 pandemic to help harvest the cherry crop. The young women ask their mother to tell them the story of her relationship with a famous movie star, Peter Duke, with whom she shared a stage and a romance.
Over the course of a few weeks, Lara tells the story a bit each day. She begins with her first role, when she was a teenager, as Emily in Our Town by Thornton Wilder. She moved on to a small part in a Hollywood movie, and eventually came to star once again as Emily in Our Town in summer theater in Michigan with Duke. During her time in Michigan, Lara suffered a broken foot and was replaced in both the play and Duke’s affections with her understudy.
After that summer, Lara gave up acting and returned home to care for an aging grandmother. After her grandmother died, Lara became a seamstress for theater productions in New York. She reconnects with her former director from the Michigan Our Town production, marries him, and moves to his family’s cherry farm, where her daughters were born and raised.
The book has a surprise ending because there is a part of the story about Duke that Lara fails to share with her daughters.
The members of the UMRA Book Club all liked the book for its setting (cherry orchard) and story framing (telling a tale during a pandemic lock down). The “action” starts slowly and builds, which was a mild criticism that some had with the overall telling of the story. Some members listened to the book read by Meryl Streep, who brought the characters to life with her rendering of the novel.
—Kathryn Sedo, UMRA Book Club I
Book Club I in January
Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2pm
Upcoming Events
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