#9 [2024/CBR16] Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

After a very good experience listening to Tom Hanks read The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, I was ready for another. It just so happened that Tom Lake (2023) was on a number of Best Book Lists from 2023, so my next Patchett book was an easy decision. I think the author must have some pull with her narrators because the one and only Meryl Streep reads the Tom Lake audiobook, and it's not surprising that she does a great job. I think it's my favorite book by Ann Patchett.

Lara is a middle-aged, married woman with three grown daughters. It is the Spring of 2020, and the beginning of the COVID lockdown. Her daughters have come home to their Michigan farm for lack of better options as their lives are temporarily put on hold. They are helping out on the farm while they are there, harvesting the fruit from the trees.

To pass the time, Lara tells her daughters her own coming-of-age story. Her daughters are most interested in the romance between their mom and a famous movie star. But Lara begins the story when she is cast as Emily in her small town's production of Our Town. When a Hollywood bigwig goes to the production to see his niece, he "discovers" Lara, and offers her a role in a movie.

Lara ends up going to Hollywood, getting an agent, filming a movie, possibly beginning the life of a starlet. When another role as Emily on Broadway falls through, Lara finds herself at a summer theater troupe at Tom Lake--in Michigan. It is at Tom Lake that Lara meets Peter Duke. He was unknown at the time, but had the movie star charisma of someone who was going to make it. Lara ended up in her bed with Peter Duke that first night, and she quickly falls for him completely.

At first Peter Duke is just excitement and sex. But as the summer goes on, it becomes clear that he's pretty selfish and unhealthy. Lara is young and Peter Duke is pretty irresistible. When he treats her badly, she doesn't even realize that she should expect better. I loved the perspective of Lara telling this story from someone who is long over the past and learned from it--and that she keeps some of the story to herself. I also loved how the peripheral characters of Lara's youth come center stage as she grows older.

By the end of the summer, the romance has unraveled and Lara's life goes on. The readers see how she became who she was as an adult and how her choices and a lot of luck led her to the life she is living and loves today.