Literary Fiction · Free kit
Tom Lake
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.”
Complete free book club kit
BookClubee may earn a commission from Bookshop.org purchases, which supports independent bookshops.
Plan your meeting
Tom Lake Icebreakers
Answer in under 30 seconds. These connect to the book’s themes without spoiling the story.
Personality Reveal
1. When you tell a story from your twenties, do you cast yourself as the lead, the director, or the person who later got a better life?
Personality Reveal
2. Are you a stay-and-tend-the-land person, or a go-where-the-next-season-is person — and has that changed since you were twenty-four?
Personality Reveal
3. If a family story has two versions, do you want the entertaining one or the complete one?
Funny & Light
4. What job did you briefly believe you were destined for, based on one (1) compliment from an adult?
Funny & Light
5. Name the fruit you would be willing to pick for eight hours if the alternative was sitting inside with your relatives.
Funny & Light
6. What is the most dramatic thing that has ever happened to you on a recreational sports court or field — no embellishing, everyone will know.
Would You Rather
7. Would you rather spend a summer doing the same play every night, or spend a summer doing the same outdoor chore every morning?
Would You Rather
8. Would you rather your children know the highlight reel of your youth, or the blooper reel?
Would You Rather
9. Would you rather be famous to strangers and restless at home, or unknown and at ease in one place?
Hot Take
10. Hot take: first love is mostly a costume, and the interesting story is who you still like when the costume comes off. Agree or disagree?
Hot Take
11. Hot take: parents owe their adult kids the truth, even when the truth is none of the kids' business. Agree or disagree?
Hot Take
12. Finish this sentence: "People who say they have no regrets are _______."
Personal Connection
13. What is one ordinary chore that, if you had to leave your life tomorrow, you would miss first?
Personal Connection
14. Whose younger self would your family most want the gossip on — a parent, a grandparent, or you — and would you actually want to hear it?
Personal Connection
15. Name a place that still feels like summer stock in your memory: a lake, a job, a house you only got for a season.