From a Wall Street Journal story by Marc Myers headlined “”Tom Lake’ Author Ann Patchett Couldn’t Read Until the Third Grade, So She Made Up Stories”:

Ann Patchett is an award-winning author whose novels include “Bel Canto” and “The Dutch House.” She is the owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn. Her new novel is “Tom Lake” (Harper). She spoke with Marc Myers.

In 1969, when I was 5, my mother, older sister and I drove from Los Angeles to Nashville, Tenn. My parents had divorced a year earlier and my mom, a nurse, had fallen in love with a surgeon in L.A. who relocated to Nashville to set up a practice.