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Lara Nelson (aka Laura Kenison) is the central character in Tom Lake, and the novel follows her as she navigates a life as a mother and wife who is continually affected by her past choices. During the span of time the novel occupies, her story principally revolves around the tension between her current life, her past, and the life she might have had with Peter Duke. She dated this famous actor in her youth, but repeatedly says she’s happier with the life she’s chosen with her husband Joe on their Michigan farm. Lara’s emotionally intense and difficult relationship with Duke aligns with her youthful ambitions for fame and a public-facing life. Her contemporary reality in the rural, isolated world of Three Sisters Orchards is nothing like her previous life. As she tells the story of this relationship to her daughters, she’s also telling them about the person she thinks she could have become.
Lara is also illustrating for them that life as an adult always contains some tension between ambition and contentment. Although her daughters know that she was formerly an actor, it’s hard to reconcile the quieter, more grounded existence their mother has in Michigan with the impulsive girl from the stories she spins. This choice between fame and stability becomes central to Lara’s identity. She begins and ends her story as a person who chooses to live behind the scenes, both literally and figuratively. Lara’s work as a seamstress is linked to this, stitching her past and present together. Just as she repairs and maintains clothes and costumes, she tries to patch and reconstruct her history and her relationships.
Lara uses storytelling as a way to connect with her daughters and distract from the frightening present during the pandemic, though she frequently editorializes her memories to make them more palatable. All three of her daughters have different relationships to her current and past identities, and those differences are also often articulated through their varying responses to her stories about Duke. Emily, especially, engages with these stories but doesn’t sympathize with many of Lara’s choices. Lara finds herself defending or explaining choices she’s made to both herself and to others. Lara’s retelling of the past becomes increasingly selective as the novel continues. She edits and reinterprets her memories to protect her daughters (and herself) from the more difficult emotions the truth might provoke.
