Tom Lake
Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, published in 2023, is a luminous, deeply felt novel about a mother, three daughters, and a story finally told. The pandemic has brought Lara Nelson's adult daughters home to the family's Michigan cherry farm. There are sour cherries to pick, a husband and a hired farmhand to feed, and long quiet hours in the orchard with no good reason to fill them. Emily, Maisie, and Nell have been asking for years about the rumor that their mother once dated the now-famous movie star Peter Duke. As the days stretch, Lara finally tells them the truth. The summer she was twenty-four, she joined a Michigan summer-stock production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town at a place called Tom Lake. She played Emily. The young man playing the Stage Manager was Duke, on the cusp of his stardom and not yet who he would become. What unfolded between them, and what Lara understood about herself, the work, her future husband, and the quiet life she would eventually choose, has lived inside her ever since. Patchett, working in the late, generous register of Commonwealth and These Precious Days, writes about parenthood, ambition, and the lives we do not lead with extraordinary tenderness. Tom Lake is one of her finest novels.
Themes & atmosphere
Also by Ann Patchett
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What you might want to know about Tom Lake
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
It is the spring of 2020, and Lara Nelson's three grown daughters Emily, Maisie, and Nell are all home picking cherries at the family orchard in northern Michigan.
Yes, partly. Tom Lake follows Lara Nelson, who once played Emily in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Ann Patchett uses the play as a recurring frame for the novel.
Yes. Both Tom Lake and The Dutch House share Ann Patchett's attention to family, memory, and quiet domestic life. Tom Lake is more pastoral, set on a Michigan cherry farm.
Tom Lake was written by Ann Patchett, published in 2023 by Harper.
Tom Lake is 320 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Tom Lake takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Tom Lake is a standalone novel by Ann Patchett, not part of a series.
Tom Lake is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.