Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

 In high school in New Hamphire, Laura and her friend Veronica are helping with tryouts for the play Our Town. After watching several terrible Emilys audition, Laura (who changes her name to Lara) tries out herself--and gets the part. As luck would have it, a Hollywood agent is in the audience (to watch his niece) and he decides Lara has a career in Hollywood in her future. When the release of her movie gets postponed, she ends up in Tom Lake, Michigan doing summer stock as once again Emily in Our Town. There she meets Peter Duke, who will eventually become a big star. All of these details come out as Lara is regaling her 3 grown daughters with how she met Peter Duke in Tom Lake. The pandemic has shut down normal life so the whole family is sheltering in place at the family cherry orchard in northern Michigan. And every day as the family harvests the cherry crop, Lara shares more details. 

I preferred the parts in the cherry orchard to the parts in Tom Lake because even in his youth, Peter Duke was kind of a jerk and a manipulator. I liked that there were a few surprise twists in the last third of the book. However, Bel Canto is still my favorite Ann Patchett book.