finished reading

This is the story of discovering our parents are humans.  It's set during the height of the pandemic but tells the story of the past and hopes for the future.  Lara, the main character is a mother to three adult daughters, home to help on the family's cherry farm because of the pandemic.  They coax Lara into regaling them with her youthful brush with fame as an aspiring actress.  

Lara relays some parts of her story and withholds other parts--to preserve the image of herself or others around her.  Some parts of her story don't need to be told to her daughters.  

Because of my own family's involvement in community theater, I could relate to the excitement and bonds that are a result of mounting a production.

This is masterful storytelling.  I hung on every word, on every sentence.  Meryl Streep's narration is wonderful.  I think I will try to read it as well, I suspect it will be a very different experience to read it.

From the publisher:

This is a story about Peter Duke who went on to be a famous actor.
This is a story about falling in love with Peter Duke who wasn't famous at all.
It's about falling so wildly in love with him – the way one will at twenty-four – that it felt like jumping off a roof at midnight.
There was no way to foresee the mess it would come to in the end.

It's spring and Lara's three grown daughters have returned to the family orchard. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the one story they've always longed to hear – of the film star with whom she shared a stage, and a romance, years before.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.