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

Back home, I nervously picked up the phone and called Jackson Ledbetter. I was rewarded with his voice mail.


I’m ditzy about phones. They make me nervous, and always have.


“Hi. I wanted to invite you on a date. If you’re not working Saturday, let’s do the Furniture Market. Noah said he saw us kissing. Call me. Bye. Oh, by the way, this is Wiley. So. Bye.”


Pathetic, I thought, hanging up the phone and putting it down on the kitchen table. Could I be more pathetic, as Chandler from Friendsmight ask.


I put rinsed off baby carrots in a bowl and gave them to Noah as I settled down on the floor with a pillow and World War Z. I lay parallel to the television and it wasn’t long before Noah lay down as well, propping his head on my leg, munching carrots and watching Robert Downey Jr. get the bad guys as I read about the history of the Zombie wars, thinking to myself that this was a real horror novel.


When would I ever have such a good idea to work with?


Chapter 23