Breakfast at the Exit Cafe

September 19, 2011
Two Canadian writers set out on a near-two-month-long, haphazard car trek through America intending to dispel unlovely myths about the U.S., and return unmoved, as they recount in their meandering, occasionally sanctimonious account. Grady, a science writer, and Simonds, a novelist, are married, live in Ontario, and have grown children. On a lark, just before Christmas 2006, they take off, driving in their Toyota Echo “into the heart of the neighbor we thought we knew,” from Washington State through the Grand Canyon, Arizona, embracing a Southern route through Texas, Alabama, and Georgia, then the Outer Banks, North Carolina, and finally passing through Princeton, New Jersey. They avoid cities, preferring the charming vista, the picturesque town, the mom-and-pop motel or restaurant, independent bookstore, and offbeat road; armed against America’s all-pervasive influence in Canada, its aggressive culture and lack of interest in things Canadian, the couple, recording their thoughts in alternating POVs, are mostly confirmed in their views of America’s “fakery,” though they are pleasantly surprised from time to time by the kindness of the native folks, a well-stocked bookstore, small-town monuments, the truly monumental natural splendors of the Southwest, and the charms of Jefferson, Texas, which redeems the couple’s unfavorable view of the state because of then-President George Bush. The authors have done their historical homework about the U.S., and provide an interesting guide for the ambivalent first-time traveler.