Literary Fiction · Free kit

Tom Lake

Ann Patchett

• Literary Fiction
• Contemporary
• Family Saga
• 2023

Spring 2020, a northern Michigan cherry orchard, three grown daughters home from a stalled world. While they pick, they finally pry the story out of their mother: a New Hampshire girl who kept being cast as Emily in Our Town, a summer-stock company called Tom Lake, and a few months with a magnetic young actor who later became famous. Patchett braids harvest days with that edited past — first love against a marriage that stayed, the lives parents lead before anyone calls them Mom, and the question of how much of a story the people who love you are owed.

“There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you'd never be able to let go? Now you're not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well, until one morning you're picking cherries with your three grown daughters and your husband goes by on the Gator and you are positive that this is all you've ever wanted in the world.”

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