#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK In this beautiful and moving novel
about family love and growing up Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s
finest writers. “Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —
The Guardian 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.
