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Summary
Chapter 1
Lara, the protagonist, is living with her husband, Joe, and their three adult daughters—Emily, Maisie, and Nell—on a cherry farm in Michigan during the COVID-19 pandemic. The family is isolated together, and because the farm is short-handed, all the daughters are helping with the cherry harvest. As they work, the girls beg Lara to tell about the time when she dated the famous actor Peter Duke. Lara begins to tell her daughters about her past life as an actress, assuring them she’ll get to Duke eventually. The novel actually begins in Lara’s voice from the 1970s, as she describes her initial backstage role in her school production of the play Our Town. Lara and her best friend Veronica, who is volunteering with her, are both high school juniors. Lara’s grandmother Nell has volunteered them to help backstage, and Nell herself is working on the costumes for the play. Lara explains to her daughters that at this point she didn’t know she was going to become an actress, adding that she was considering options that ranged from being a schoolteacher to being a vet. Her middle daughter Maisie interrupts the story to express astonishment that her mother was once interested in the same field as her; Maisie is a vet-in-training. Lara resumes the story, explaining that she listens covertly to every other actor auditioning for the role of Emily and knows she can do it better herself. She ends the chapter by describing how she changed the spelling of her name from ”Laura” to “Lara” when she signed up to audition herself, because she thought it sounded chicer.
Chapter 2
Lara hands her audition form to a very annoyed Veronica and prepares to read for the part of Emily. When it’s finally her turn, she and Jimmy Haywood, who is vying for the role of George, audition together. Their performance is leaps and bounds better than anyone else’s, and Lara wins the part. Back in the present, Lara mentions that she lost contact with both Veronica and Jimmy a long time ago, but that the high school production was a hit and got an extended run. Her daughters prod her about Duke, asking if he played Lara’s love interest. Lara corrects their assumption that he played George in Our Town, explaining that he actually played Editor Webb, Emily’s father, when they later performed together in Michigan. Back in the 70s, Lara joins the school drama club and stars in productions of Bye Bye Birdie and The Miracle Worker. She begins college in the early 80s and doesn’t do any more theater until her junior year, when she auditions for Our Town again. Onstage, she catches the attention of a director, Bill Ripley. Ripley invites her to audition for a movie in Los Angeles. Lara has no idea how she’ll get there, but Bill reassures her that he’ll arrange for her to fly out for a screen test. In the present, everyone but Lara ignores the blossoming cherry trees outside the windows, instead listening obsessively to news stories about the pandemic. Lara thinks about how nice it is to have everyone together again, even if it is circumstantial and temporary, and the family makes a plan for the daughters to help Joe and Lara bring in the cherry harvest.
Analysis: Chapters 1 & 2
The opening chapters of the novel set the tone by introducing almost all of its key themes at once. In the first few pages, the reader encounters moments of reflection about taking responsibility for one’s choices, the emotional push-and-pull of being a parent, and the cyclical nature of relationships and family life. They also get an intimate introduction to Lara’s character. The novel begins with a blend of the present day and flashbacks, starting in the middle of one of Lara’s stories about her past. The reader is brought back abruptly to the present of the coronavirus pandemic in Michigan, and then zooms back to the 1970s for more information about Lara’s life as a young actress. This juxtaposition between past and present shows how clearly Lara’s past plays a role in her present-day life. The things which were important to her in her youth feel just as close to the reader as the events of her adult life on the cherry farm.
Read an in-depth character analysis of Lara Nelson.
Tom Lake is one of the first American novels to be set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. The frightening early days of the pandemic force the Nelson family into a period of isolation together. Brought back from their mostly separate adult lives, Lara’s daughters revert to being younger versions of themselves and have to adjust to the shared responsibility of keeping Three Sisters Orchards running. The setting of a fruit farm owned by the same family for generations immediately introduces the idea of cycles—both the literal agricultural cycles of harvest and planting, growth and death, and the longer cycles of human lives that play out there.
Read about the symbolism of the Covid 19 Pandemic in Tom Lake.
As the story settles into a rhythm between Lara’s present and her many flashbacks, it becomes clear that she is also revisiting her past with an editor’s eye. She’s prompted by her daughters’ curiosity about her previous relationship with the famous actor Peter Duke. However, rather than jumping directly to the juicy parts, Lara starts the story before she meets Duke. She knows that her daughters, especially Emily, have intense and complicated feelings about the famous Duke and the path they think their mother could have walked. For this reason, she doesn’t glorify or celebrate Duke’s celebrity. Indeed, she chooses to start her recounting with the ordinary story of her time in a school play, rather than the extraordinary event of her discovery by Ripley and invitation for an LA screen test. She knows there’s a tension between what her daughters expect from her story and how she herself views her past. The contrast between Emily, Maisie, and Nell’s desires for sensational details and Lara’s choice to celebrate the everyday is often frustrating for Lara. She has tried throughout her life to instill a love of honesty and commitment in her daughters, only to have them idolize Duke for his good looks and his rock’n’roll lifestyle. Lara wants them to understand that the small everyday details about her life are just as important as Duke’s presence in it, if not more. But Lara’s daughters, fascinated by her connection to fame, want to fast forward to the dramatic moments. Lara insists on telling the story on her terms, slowly revealing the moments of her life that shaped her. Even at this early point in the story, before the reader knows that Lara deliberately leaves much of the Duke story untold, it’s clear that Lara’s daughters do not fully know or understand her.
Read an in-depth character analysis of Peter Duke.
When the focus does shift to Peter Duke, Lara is quick to correct her daughters’ misconceptions. For example, although she knows it would make for a more dramatic story, she makes it clear to them that Duke never played her love interest in Our Town. This small correction is emblematic of the way Lara chooses to edit and present her story to her daughters. She refuses to be bombastic or to embellish, carefully managing their expectations and molding how her daughters understand her experiences.
As the section progresses, the novel also begins to hint that the idea of the “path not taken” will be a recurrent and significant one. Lara’s daughters ask her about college, and Lara explains that although she was accepted into Dartmouth and Penn, she chose to attend the University of New Hampshire because she could afford it far more easily. Even then, she remained unsure of what her future held, and didn’t want to potentially waste money on a brand-name college. The decision to attend New Hampshire rather than a more prestigious institution is one of many choices Lara makes where practicality wins out over glory.
Read more about the motif of Two Possible Paths in the novel.
