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

They had come up with what they considered, in their business-like minds, the only possible solution to the problem that was their grandson. They were genuinely upset when I told them I would not disappear, that Noah was my son and I would take full responsibility for him, no matter what, even if I was gay and not a very good person. I was not going to cut and run like their daughter. They were welcome to help and be part of his life, but I was not going to be chased off.


“Then we wish you the best,” Mr. Warren had said, steering his wife out of the hospital room and refusing to listen to her protests.


Standing there now, with the two of them, I couldn’t help but think of that night.


Chapter 14