I loved this book.  Patchett has created a seamless world of memorable characters and through her technique of flashbacks, engaged them in a remarkable examination of how a life can unfold and send ripples through the worlds of others.

We first meet Lara Kenison when she is helping at auditions for Thornton Wilder’s Our Town being cast for a community theater in her small New Hampshire town.  From there we follow Lara through her own role as Emily Webb in that production and eventually to  a movie in Hollywood, to a production of Our Town at Tom Lake, to a summer stock theater north of  Detroit, and finally to a cherry farm in upper Michigan on the shore of Lake Michigan.

The story is engagingly told by Lara as she responds to her three daughters’ queries while gathering the cherry orchard on their farm.  Emily, Maisie, and Nell are a rapt audience as Lara tells of her love affair with Peter Duke that summer at Tom Lake and how Peter later became a famous actor while Lara married the cherry farmer.

Too many spoiler alerts would be needed to give further plot details, but trust me, this is a book that will grab you and hold you until the very end.  No flashy surprises, but a steady diet of life as lived by mostly good people and how those lives flow through to the next generation and the next and the next.

The Nelson family on the northern Michigan cherry farm looks like a pretty good place to live and bring up a family, certainly different than the future that Peter Duke followed after that summer at Tom Lake.

This book has already garnered an armful of accolades including being one of the NYT’s Ten Best of the Year.  I loved it.