Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of infertility, pregnancy loss, child death, abuse, racism, sexism, and anti-gay bias.

Mariel Sterenud, later Mariel Prager, is one of four narrators in Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. Mariel’s narration takes place from 1996-2000, largely focused on one month in the summer of 1996 in which she loses her pregnancy, waits out her mother Florence’s stubborn stay at a local church, and becomes pregnant again via in vitro fertilization. Mariel struggles with her feelings about motherhood as she decides whether to reconcile with her own estranged mother, whom she blames for the accidental death of her son, Gus, a decade prior. Over the course of this narrative arc, Mariel grows to forgive her mother after working through lasting feelings of frustration that Florence (despite the difficulties of Mariel’s childhood) is viewed by Bear Jaw residents as the sympathetic party in their standoff. Mariel had a nurtured childhood with her parents and loves the Lakeside restaurant, which she looks forward to preserving for her daughter.

Mariel also appears frequently in Ned’s narration. Ned considers Mariel his dream woman, whom he believes he fell in love with at first sight.