I’ve been enjoying my summer re-read of the novel “Tom Lake” by Nashville-based and prize-winning author Ann Patchett.  I realize that this blog featuring a review of a popular novel will be a divergence from folk music, but I wanted to let you all know about it, in the vein of reporting on a piece of art that is such a great summer adventure related to the performing arts.

The novel takes place in the summer of 2020 at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Lara and her husband Joe Nelson and their three adult daughters, Emily, Maisie, and Nell, have retreated to the cherry farm in Michigan which they own and manage to help run the orchard in the absence of their regular seasonal workers.  During the long days of cherry picking, the daughters learn of their mother’s relationship with a famous actor while she was an actress performing at the summer stock company, Tom Lake.

To begin with, Lara begins telling them the story of her past, beginning with her start in theater. She was first cast as the character Emily in the Thornton Wilder play “Our Town” while still in high school, then again in college.  After seeing her in that production, a Hollywood director offered Lara a screen test for a film he’s making in LA.

As Lara and the girls pick cherries during long days on the farm, Lara continues her story.  After many twists and turns in her career, she ends up taking the role of Emily again, this time with a professional summer stock troupe in Michigan called Tom Lake.  There, she meets the then-unknown actor Peter Duke.

Patchett’s story weaves in and out of real time and the past, and with each new twist in the story, the family discovers what made their family, and how their parents found each other and the cherry farm became their home.  The most thrilling event happened when young Lara and her theatre colleagues visited the cherry farm while still at Tom Lake, back in 1988.  The Tom Lake show’s director invites them to his family cherry orchard.  As they first view it, you can actually envision from Patchett’s description the place where Lara will eventually live and have her family, twenty odd years from then.

“The rutted drive was filled with rainwater.  Every leaf and blade of grass was shining. Once we turned we quieted down.  The towering woods to our left, the white clapboard house with blue shutters up ahead, the gentle hills of fruit trees to the right that spread out behind the house past where we could see — it looked like a sampler stitched by an eighteenth-century girl…never had I seen a place that made the tightness in my chest relax.  The order in the rows of trees and the dark green of the lush grass beneath them soothed me alike a hand brushing across my forehead.”

The novel explores themes of love, loss, memory, and the complexities of family relationships, particularly how the past shapes the present.  It’s an elegant and graceful book, and speaks to the art of living through art in ways that shape us and give us insight into the true nature of love and finding your truest self.

As always, thanks for reading!

Love and Blessings,
Susie

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Award-winning recording artist, Broadway singer, journalist, educator and critically-acclaimed powerhouse vocalist, Susie Glaze has been called “one of the most beautiful voices in bluegrass and folk music today” by Roz Larman of KPFK’s Folk Scene.  LA Weekly voted her ensemble Best New Folk in their Best of LA Weekly for 2019, calling Susie “an incomparable vocalist.”  “A flat out superb vocalist… Glaze delivers warm, amber-toned vocals that explore the psychic depth of a lyric with deft acuity and technical perfection.”  As an educator, Susie has lectured at USC Thornton School of Music and Cal State Northridge on “Balladry to Bluegrass,” illuminating the historical path of ancient folk forms in the United Kingdom to the United States via immigration into the mountains of Appalachia.  Susie has taught workshops since 2018 at California music camps RiverTunes and Vocáli Voice Camp.  She is a current specialist in performance and historian on the work of American folk music icon, Jean Ritchie.  Susie now offers private voice coaching online via the Zoom platform.   www.susieglaze.com