Wednesday, October 16th at 7pm on Zoom

Tom Lake
by Ann Patchett

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.

Potential future reads for November and January will be discussed at the October meeting. There is no Book Club meeting in December.

Donna has recommended:

Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Tender at the Bone and Save Me the Plums both by Ruth Reichel

And please review the list below that Susie shared from her New Mexico group. 

2024

May 15                 Horse  by Geraldine Brooks

June 19                 The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer

July 17                  Amy and Isabelle  by Elizabeth Stroud

August 21             Tom Lake  by Ann Patchett

September 18        The Personal Librarian  by Marie Benedict

October 16             Nobody Needs to Know  by Pidgeon Pagonis

November 20         Interpreter of Maladies  by Jhumpa Lahiri

December 18          The Dalai Lama’s Cat  by David Michie

2025

January 15              The Women by Kristin Hannah

February 19             House Made of Dawn  by N. Scott Momaday

March 19                 Coyote America  by Flores Dan

April 16                   Damnation Spring  by Ash Davidson