12 episodes · 4h 52m
Open All Night
One night, one stranger, at an all-night highway café in western Nebraska. They will be gone by six, and the night waitress never asks what is wrong.
Read the back cover
From nineteen fifty-eight to nineteen eighty-six, Arlette worked the night counter at the Crossroads Café, where a U.S. highway crosses a state road out in the flat country. Ten at night to six in the morning. Eleven red stools, six booths, a pie case, and a cook who said about twelve words a night.
Each episode is one night and one person who came through the door needing something that was not on the menu. A bride at one in the morning. A soldier forty miles from home. A preacher with a flat tire and eleven cents. She tells you what they ordered, what they actually needed, and what she did about it, which was usually very little, very well.
Nobody is in danger. It is just a long night, a fresh pot, and whoever comes in next.