Wise-cracking Wiley Cantrell is loud and roaringly outrageous -- and he needs to be to keep his deeply religious neighbors and family in the Deep South at bay. A failed writer on food stamps, Wiley works a minimum wage job and barely manages to keep himself and his deaf son, Noah, more than a stone’s throw away from Dumpster-diving. Noah was a meth baby and has the birth defects to prove it. He sees how lonely his father is and tries to help him find a boyfriend while Wiley struggles to help Noah have a relationship with his incarcerated mother, who believes the best way to feed a child is with a slingshot. No wonder Noah becomes Wiley’s biggest supporter when Boston nurse Jackson Ledbetter walks past Wiley’s cash register and sets his sugar tree on fire. Jackson falls like a wet mule wearing concrete boots for Wiley’s sense of humor. And while Wiley represents much of the best of the South, Jackson is hiding a secret that could threaten this new family in the making. When North meets South, the cultural misunderstandings are many, but so are the laughs, and the tears, but, as they say down in Dixie, it’s all good.

Shaking the Sugar Tree

“Hello!” Noah said in his strange voice.


Jackson did something rather extraordinary. He turned to Noah and used sign language.


Noah smiled with pleasure at this unexpected communication.


My father thinks you’re cute, he said.


“I didn’t get that last part,” Jackson said.


“He said his father thinks you’re cute or something. He’s determined to find me a boyfriend.”


Turning to Noah, he signed, Are you hungry?


“Where did you learn sign?” I asked.


“I’m a pediatric nurse. I had two semesters of sign so I could help deaf kids and their parents.”


“You’re pretty good, but you told him your name is J-a-e-k.”


“I’m a bit rusty,” he said, blushing with embarrassment.


Chapter 3