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

“Leave it, Mama,” Bill said. “Don’t get him going.”


“I hate the way he talks in this house!” she exclaimed.


“A funeral mass for a tampon,” Papaw said. “Put that in one of your books, Wiley, and you might sell a few copies.”


“You see where he gets it from,” Bill said, glancing at Papaw unhappily.


“You don’t even go to mass anymore,” Mama said, offering Bill a disapproving look.


“Can we talk about something else?” Shelly suggested.


“It’s a sin to miss your Sunday obligation,” Mama said.


“I’m a Baptist now, Mama,” Bill said.


“Well, at least you go to church,” she said.


“Fat lot of good it does you,” Mama said.


“I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe in that nonsense.”


“And look where that’s got you,” she said. “You and your lifestyle.”


Chapter 11