Part travelogue, part exploration—a road trip into the reality behind the cultural myth that is America.

Breakfast at the Exit Cafe is, on the face of it, the personal story of a journey--told in alternating passages by the two travellers--from British Columbia to Ontario through the United States, taking the longest route possible. However, what begins as a road trip soon becomes a journey of discovery into the reality behind the cultural myth that is America. For Grady, who was born across the river from Detroit, Michigan, and whose forebears were slaves who came to Canada in the 1870s, this is a journey into the fear of racism and violence and into his own family roots. For Simonds, who grew up a lonely Canadian in the American School of Campinas, Brazil, this is a journey into the ex-pat promised land, a land populated by Ugly Americans.

Simonds and Grady travel backwards through history, from California to the earliest settlements of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Roanoke, Virginia. In pondering the natural splendours of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River, and the Mississippi, the bayous of Louisiana and the Outer Banks, they consider the impact of geography on culture and of culture on the landscape. The Americans they meet along the way illuminate a country dissolving in the grip of the final years of the Bush administration, and they are forced to reassess their own assumptions and the world's perceptions of this powerful and complicated country. Part travelogue, part exploration, the book is also a midwinter love story, liberally laced with romance and humour.