The rest of the story

I look at my girls, my brilliant young women. I want them to think I was better than I was and I want to tell them the truth in case the truth will be useful. Those two desires do not nearly coexist, but this where we are in the story.

Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

Rarely can a novel be summarized in a single paragraph from that novel, but this is the case in the above paragraph found about three-fourths of the way through Ann Patchett's terrific 2023 novel Tom Lake.

Lara's three daughters are grown women, still unmarried and at home for the annual cherry harvest at the family farm near Traverse City, Mich. One of them, the eldest, believes she may actually be the daughter of Peter Duke, the famous movie star. While they pick cherries, Lara decides it is finally time to tell them the story of when she and Duke were lovers. As the paragraph suggests, she wants to tell them the truth, but just not the whole truth. The latter she saves for us readers.

Lara, originally just Laura, is in high school when she first plays Emily in the Thornton Wilder play Our Town. She turns out to be a natural in the part. She eventually goes to Hollywood to make a movie. While waiting for the movie to come out she finds herself at Tom Lake in Michigan, a summer stock theater that is putting on Our Town. Once again she is a natural for the part of Emily.

Also in the cast is charismatic young actor named Peter Duke, with whom she falls instantly in love. Patchett's novels do not normally focus much on sex, but this one is an exception, although of course Lara does not tell her daughters all the juicy details.

Joe, Lara's husband and the father of all three girls, thinks he knows the story, and he listens to just part of what she says among the cherry trees, but he doesn't really know the whole story either. Joe, whose family, owns that cherry farm as Lara's story unfolds, is then a director who helps get that Tom Lake production under way, and later he becomes a cast member. Even then he loves Lara, but she is Duke's girl and he does not interfere. They meet again much later.

The love story has its ups and downs, as most love stories do, but Duke is star material, and Lara soon realizes that she isn't. She may be a natural to play Emily and her only movie is a hit, yet she realizes there at Tom Lake that acting isn't really her future. Besides, Duke is not a one-woman man, though Lara comes to realize she is a one-man hoe.

Patchett has written a series of wonderful novels, all remarkably different. I place Tom Lake right there at the top, along with The Patron Saint of Liars and State of Wonder.