I'm Linda Holmes. This is NPR's Book of the Day. A lot of fiction writers have tried to figure out

what to do about all the loss and the disruption that the COVID pandemic brought and still brings to so many lives.

Anne Patchett's novel, Tom Lake, takes place in the summer of 2020. And it finds its story in what was a very common

experience that year. Being in places you might not otherwise be with people you might

otherwise not be with. The book is about a woman named Lara whose three adult daughters

have come back home. Lara was once an actress and she tells her daughters the story of her relationship with an actor.

She did not wind up marrying.

Patchett tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly how details can be touched off by real life, including a transcendent experience eating cherries in an airport.

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In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

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The writer Anne Patchett does not have children.

This is by choice, and being a writer, she has written about her reasons.

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.

Part of not wanting children, she goes on,

has always been the certainty that I didn't have the energy for it,

...