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

“I don’t do so well with the men,” I admitted. “Most of them want to kill me because I have long hair, or I haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, or because I’m gay. The others just want a quickie in the bathroom at the mall. Guess they don’t like having a child tag along on their dates or something.”


“It takes a special man to tackle both of us. It helps if you enjoy picking lice out of his hair.”


He smiled as if not sure whether to believe me or not.


We consumed a fair amount of the fixings as we talked. A good eating, as we say.


Noah had his eye on the flat screen television, which sat on the floor next to a box marked GAMES.


Can I look at your games?Noah signed to Jackson after we had finished eating.


“Sure,” Jackson said. “Want me to help you set it up?”


“He’s good at that kind of stuff,” I said.


Noah scampered over and opened the box. He held up Modern Warfare III with a look of wretched pleading on his face.


Chapter 5