She did it again: with her latest novel, Tom Lake (2023), Ann Patchett has created a story that is accessible, believable, meaningful, and moving, a down-to-earth tale about a family of five, trying to keep their cherry farm in northern Michigan afloat during the global pandemic, the horrors of which are kept at a relatively safe remove. Patchett's characters move through their pastoral setting, loving each other, working together, bickering occasionally as they endure the pressures and stresses of trying to harvest the summer's fruit with a fraction of the help they usually rely upon, before the crop rots and the season ends.
Bone weary and somewhat bored—picking cherries is tedious work after all—the family's three daughters beg their mother to tell them about her younger self. She was an actress once, nearly a star, in a relationship with an actor before he was famous, a charismatic young man who ultimately achieved great heights, whose relationships and exploits became the stuff of tabloids and front page news.
The mother's tale provides the second story-line for Tom Lake, a kind of shadow narrative where delight and humor still rise up to meet us, but serious conflicts also brew. When she was young, about the current age of her daughters, the mother made some risky choices, swayed by the pressures of Hollywood and the insular environment of a summer stock theater on the shores of the eponymous Tom Lake, where, for a handful of life-changing weeks, she brilliantly played the part of Emily in Thornton Wilder's Our Town and fell in love with the actor. Tom Lake lies not so far from where the family lives now, a point that becomes significant as the novel unfolds.
In the presence of her daughters, the mother presents herself as a truth-teller, with only a few reprieves along the way where she confides details she does not otherwise share to an entirely different audience—us, Patchett's readers. Like every great author, Patchett understands the heavy weight of secrets. The primary of these slices neatly through the end of Tom Lake, slick and swift as a shark's fin. It's delivery rather took my breath away, given all that had already happened in the book, but that doesn't mean I didn't cherish the revelation and appreciate its timeliness, in terms of our culture today. If the resolution that followed felt a little bit too easy to me, that doesn't mean others won't cherish it as reassuring, as comforting as a farmhouse in northern Michigan, surrounded by a verdant cherry orchard in full fruit, populated by people you can't wait to return at the end of the day.
Footnote: if you enjoy audiobooks, then it might be good to know Meryl Streep is the reader of this one. I just added my name to the hold list.:)