![]() I had to fly to Detroit in the morning, then fly to Traverse City on a tiny commuter plane, drive two hours to Petoskey, do an event and then do the whole thing in reverse all in one day. PATCHETT: (Laughter) Well, when I was on book tour for "Bel Canto," my publicist told me that I had to go to a store in Petoskey, Mich., called Mclean and Eakin. KELLY: And what got you into it? Why the interest in cherries? I mean, the fruit belt, the cherry farms, the apple farms in northern Michigan - that is very specifically a world like no other. ![]() PATCHETT: Really not at all because I was going to real cherry farms in Traverse City, Mich., to do my research about cherry farms in Traverse City, Mich. KELLY: And how much of the fictional cherry farm in this book draws on that old farmhouse in a wide field, as you describe it, that you've actually visited when you were going to see your editor? KELLY: You can't leave out Maisie of the real daughters, yeah. So I thought, well, if I have an Emily and I have a Nell, then of course I'm going to have a Maisie. And she was a tremendous artist, and I wanted to name the youngest daughter Nell. And then there was a woman I greatly admired named Nell Gifford, who had something called the Giffords Circus. So they would definitely name the first girl Emily. PATCHETT: So I knew that there would be three daughters, and I knew that the oldest one would have to be named Emily because the book circles the play "Our Town," and Lara, when she was an actress, played Emily. And for people who have not picked up your new book, the fictional daughters in "Tom Lake" are named Emily, Maisie and Nell. And on that farm lived three daughters named. In that essay, you describe a real-life farm that belonged to the editor of your first two books. ![]() KELLY: Well, I will share that as I was rereading that essay I quoted from - the essay you wrote about why you decided you didn't want to have kids - I stumbled on something that made me do a double take. And so it was very easy for me to make the leap, to imagine something good that came out of something so bad. I was glad my husband wasn't going to work every day. PATCHETT: And even if you don't have kids, I was so glad to not be running all over the place. PATCHETT: Well, I know it was true for so many of my friends that they were saying, oh, the pandemic. Why put that mother-daughter relationship at the center of your story? And Lara, the mom and your narrator, she is loving having her three 20-something daughters back home. KELLY: So this book, your book, unfolds during that surreal summer of 2020 when so many grown-up kids were moving back home, moving back into their childhood bedrooms. ![]() The book is titled "Tom Lake." And Ann Patchett, I am so glad to speak with you again.ĪNN PATCHETT: I am so glad to speak with you, Mary Louise. Well, Patchett's new novel is about a woman named Lara who is many things but, at the core, a mother. Part of not wanting children, she goes on, has always been the certainty that I didn't have the energy for it, and so I had to make a choice - the choice between children and writing. I have just enough energy to write, Patchett says, keep up with the house, be a decent friend, a decent daughter and sister and wife. And being a writer, she has written about her reasons. ![]() The writer Ann Patchett does not have children. ![]()
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