Summary

Latisha’s restaurant serves a second group of tourists for the dinner rush. Latisha serves a table where each tourist asks for the special. They are all Canadians, and one of them leaves Latisha a book, The Shagganappi. Latisha is annoyed by their polite behavior.

When Latisha was married to George, he used to tell her that Canadians were dependent and overly polite while Americans were independent, modern, and active. Latisha grew annoyed with these constant comparisons over time.

At Eli’s cabin, he opens a package of books Sifton gave him. Eli chooses to read the Western and acknowledges the novel as “junk” but delicious, like “eating potato chips” (181). The Indigenous man in the novel kidnaps a white woman and she falls in love with him.

Before he moved back to his mother’s cabin, Eli dated a woman named...