A waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner in Waterbury, Connecticut, Elsie hopes her nickel-and-dime tips will add up to a new life. Then she meets Bashkim, who is at once both worldly and naive, a married man who left Albania to chase his dreams-- and wound up working as a line cook in Waterbury, Connecticut. When Elsie she learns that she's pregnant, she wonders what he'll do about the wife he left behind. Seventeen years later, headstrong and independent...