Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-21

Chapters 22-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 10-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary

Florence narrates in 1956.

Florence, who dislikes surprises, attempts to convince her husband, Gustav, to turn back from his surprise trip to Bear Jaw to celebrate their wedding anniversary. She dreads facing Floyd and dislikes Gustav’s eagerness to have unprotected sex with the hope of conceiving, something Florence agreed to while drinking and doesn’t know how to take back. She looks forward to seeing Al, however, whom she still considers “the love of her life” and who still works at the Lakeside (201).

Florence and Gustav have dinner at the Lakeside with several of Florence’s school friends and their spouses. Florence admires the improvements made to the Lakeside, while Gustav notes the mounted deer head (which came from Archie’s house). As Gustav raises a toast to their 15 years of marriage, Florence sees that he will be an excellent father, even as she knows she will be a terrible mother.

When the promised live band fails to arrive, Gustav and some high school band members put on an impromptu performance. The whole restaurant joins in, playing or dancing. When Florence takes a break, she meets Al outside. Al is divorced; they discuss his potential upcoming date with a local widow. Al confesses he still has feelings for Florence though leaves it to her to decide what, if anything, to do with that information. She returns inside and dances with Gustav until Betty finally sends the revelers home. They return to their hotel and have unprotected sex. Afterward, while Gustav sleeps, Florence goes outside and walks by the lake.

Chapter 11 Summary

Mariel narrates in 1996.

Brenda and Mariel drink beer while Kyle butchers the deer. Drinking feels strange to Mariel, given her recent pregnancy. She decides not to call the church to let Florence know she isn’t coming, refusing to let her mother “set the terms” of their reconnection (215). Mariel is jealous of Brenda’s apparent peace of mind about losing her husband, Fred, and feels uncomfortable when Brenda asks if she has children. The two women confide in one another over gin martinis. Mariel discusses her pregnancy loss while Brenda laments not considering the racism that her son, adopted from Korea, might face in insular Bear Jaw.

Mariel invites Brenda to the Lakeside, but Brenda declines. (In Chapter 13, we learn that this is because Brenda has been ostracized by the women of Bear Jaw after having sex with a married man.) While perusing a cookbook, Mariel finds an inscription from someone named Paul, whom she wonders about. When Mariel leaves that afternoon, she sees a sheriff’s department car, its sirens wailing.

Chapter 12 Summary

Florence narrates in 1957-1964.

Florence attributes Mariel’s conception to her anniversary weekend in Bear Jaw with Gustav. Gustav is thrilled by fatherhood, but Florence is constantly anxious about Mariel. Florence becomes highly overprotective. Betty’s efforts to make Mariel love the Lakeside increase Florence’s anxiety.

Chapter 13 Summary

Mariel narrates in 1996.

Mariel ignores the police car and heads toward the Lakeside, though she is quickly stopped by her neighbor, Hazel. The town has been searching for Mariel after someone saw her car pulled over. Florence has stubbornly remained at the church, refusing to leave with anyone besides Mariel. Mariel, however, does not retrieve Florence. At the Lakeside, Mariel reflects on how her new and talented server, Cayla, might have, in another era, worked at the supper club for decades. In 1996, Mariel recognizes, the girl will likely work there only for a summer.

One regular customer is known as “Edina Sue” because she moved from Edina 16 years prior. Mariel first met Edina Sue when the woman appeared at the Lakeside to drink alone on Mother’s Day, which endeared her to Mariel. Mariel tells Al and a younger but superior chef named Felix about the venison. Felix came to Bear Jaw from Mexico 10 years prior, seeking employment at the Majestic Lodge, which closed abruptly after he arrived. He worked his way up through the Lakeside’s kitchen ranks; Mariel hopes he will stay for many years, though she doubts this. An avid chef herself, Mariel finds that the Lakeside’s customers don’t like her culinary creativity, preferring that the supper club serve the same reliable food.

Hazel shares gossip that Brenda has had sex with several married Bear Jaw men, including Paul Buckman, a regular at the Lakeside. Brenda lost her job over the affair, but Paul did not. Brenda was also ostracized by the local women. Mariel scolds Hazel for this, shocking the older woman, who reveals that Florence is still waiting at the church for Mariel. Mariel refuses to retrieve her mother that night.

The next morning, Mariel learns that Florence spent the whole night at the church. Various Bear Jaw residents deliver food and entertainment to Florence to make her self-imposed vigil more comfortable. Mariel stubbornly refuses to go to the church, realizing that Florence is angry because Mariel inherited the supper club.

Chapter 14 Summary

Florence narrates in 1975-1976.

Florence, jealous of how much Mariel likes the Lakeside and her grandparents, attempts to use Mariel’s other desires as leverage to get her daughter to give up spending summers in Bear Jaw. She warns Mariel that the Lakeside won’t last forever, due to the encroachment of chain restaurants. Florence personally looks forward to inheriting and selling the business. She still dreams of buying the yellow house where she was born.

When Mariel plans to attend college out of state, Florence regrets urging her daughter to expand her horizons. As Mariel posts applications to far-off colleges, Florence removes them from the mail and throws them away, rationalizing that this is for the benefit of their family. When Mariel never hears back from the other schools, she considers it a sign of her extreme unworthiness, which causes Florence to feel some guilt. When Florence and Gustav drop Mariel off at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Florence struggles to leave her daughter.

Betty is excited that Mariel’s college is close enough for Mariel to work at the Lakeside on weekends; she buys Mariel a car to do so. When Mariel turns 19, her grandparents report they have changed their will and plan to leave the Lakeside to Mariel, not Florence. Florence drives to St. Paul and learns that the yellow house has been torn down.

Chapters 10-14 Analysis

This portion of the novel sees Ned’s perspective disappear. Not only does Ned’s narration not resume, but he is also physically absent for much of Mariel’s narrative. Instead, the novel refocuses on its women characters. Florence’s narrative includes enormous time jumps, leaving her childhood and moving into the decades when she is married and then becomes a mother. This condensing of Florence’s adult timeline (with 15 years passing between Chapters 8 and 10, and 19 across Chapters 12 and 14) suggests that Florence’s sense of self is not as crucially developed in the years she is married and raising her child. Indeed, Florence’s narration in this section becomes almost entirely about her daughter—even before Mariel is conceived. This builds on the novel’s suggestion that motherhood is a consuming project (more so than fatherhood, given Ned’s balancing of parenthood and career during Gus’s life) that threatens to erase the autonomy of mothers, particularly if they, like Florence, take on the role unenthusiastically.

This part of the text also pays attention to the middle of the 20th century as an era of dubious progress. As the text offers both appreciation for Nostalgia and Dreams of the Future, the midcentury emerges, to the characters, as an in-between time that holds neither nostalgia nor hope. Florence, for example, dislikes the emergence of the salad bar in restaurants, which she sees as an indecorous lack of service—an impression that is built upon her own days as the “salad girl” at the Lakeside. This presentation of the middle of the 20th century counteracts conventional narratives about this era of economic boom times. The novel looks past broader material success at how this kind of progress damaged smaller businesses like the Lakeside. Though by this portion of the novel, none of the narrators has a relationship to Jorby’s—Ned and Mariel are no longer financially connected to the chain—the novel implies that this negative progress is directly linked to the proliferation of chain restaurants.

While Florence’s time in the midcentury is thus overshadowed by the things she dislikes, the characterization of Mariel’s experiences in 1996 is not as straightforward. Instead, the novel posits that societal changes may benefit young people, but have passed Mariel by. In Chapter 13, for example, Mariel notes that she is unlikely to keep smart young waitstaff like Cayla for more than a summer or two, when, in decades prior, Cayla might have become a lifelong employee of the Lakeside and built her life around the restaurant. Mariel’s framing of this, rueful but accepting, signals that she recognizes that while this may be a personal loss, it is, overall, a social benefit. Held in contrast to Betty’s highly limited prospects, the increase in opportunities for women is clearly a good change, even if it does play into the complicated difficulties of small restaurants like the Lakeside.