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

“Goddammit, Wiley,” she said. “Will you get him off me?”


I dropped her duffel bag, glad to hear something or other break when it hit the concrete. I pulled Noah away, held him back.


She snatched up the bag, looked down at him. She did not know what to say.


“Hello, Noah,” she offered at last, her voice stiff.


“I fine,” he said, offering his brightest smile.


He was still learning to read lips, could work out some of the basic interactions. He knew the first question someone would most likely ask was how he was, so he automatically said he was fine.


Kayla’s lower lip trembled and she pulled her eyes away from him and looked around, the expression in her eyes dazed.


“I know it’s not good timing, but I was hoping to get a picture of you and Noah,” I said quietly. “He doesn’t have one, you know.”


She rolled her eyes and exhaled rather sharply.


“I want him to have at least one,” I said softly.


Chapter 15