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 brought some of Eli’s clothes for him to try on,” Shelly said. “They’re in the guest bedroom.”


Shelly was a businesswoman and looked like it. Prim and proper, she was a genuine Southern belle, a good Baptist, a firm believer in hard work and never setting a foot out of line. She ran a tight ship.


“The sleeves on Noah’s coat are too short,” Mama complained. “Why do you let him walk around wearing this thing?”


“I can’t buy children’s clothes with food stamps, can I?” I asked.


“Shelly, if you’ll watch the food, I’m going to take my grandson to the bedroom and we’re going to try on some clothes. What’s the sign for ‘try on clothes’?”


“Oh, I can never remember all these signs,” she complained, leading him away.


“He’s getting big,” Shelly observed.


Chapter 9