Winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize for 1995. The author’s debut where friendship and politics intersect to create profound changes of both mind and heart. Impulsive, slightly manic anthropologist Patrick McGuffin (better known as Spoon) convinces his best friend, the quiet, dreamy Armando, to travel to Guatamala to be best man at Spoon's impending wedding into a prominent Guatamalan family.