Recalling the past at her daughters' request, Lara tells the story of a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance, which causes her daughters to examine their own lives and reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. - (Baker & Taylor)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • READ BY MERYL STREEP

“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.”—The Guardian

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

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.

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* The incomparable pairing of Ann Patchett and Meryl Streep has created the audiobook we all needed—we just didn't know it. In the summer of 2020, Lara, her husband Joe, and their three adult daughters have come together on the family's cherry farm, thanks to COVID-19. As the days picking cherries go by, the daughters, who have always romanticized their mother's past relationship with a famous movie star, beg her to retell the story of how she came to meet this man at a summer stock production of Our Town many years ago. Lara tells her story in first person, alternating between that long-ago summer and the present day, with both stories equally engaging. And like only a perfect collaboration can do, Meryl Streep's narration brings another dimension to the reading experience. Streep breathes life into Lara's story with her exceptionally nuanced voice, and she fully embodies Lara. While it is not essential to know Thornton Wilder's Our Town, it will significantly enhance the appreciation of the novel to be acquainted with the play. This audiobook is a true must-have for public libraries. Even those who have read the print version will seek out the audiobook for the immersive spell that Streep weaves around this novel. Streep and Patchett are a crackerjack duo! Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.