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 seem to have somehow managed for ten years now,” I pointed out.


“There’s a difference between surviving and thriving,” she said.


“How can you be so heartless?” I asked.


She threw her hands up in disgust. I resisted the urge to get up and smack her right across the face.


“You’re mad now,” she observed. “I’m not being supportive. I’m being mean. It’s always my fault. It’s always the same with you, Wiley.”


“Not at all,” I said. “Maybe you’re right, Mama. Maybe I’m a lousy father. Maybe Noah would have been better off with Mr. and Mrs. Warren, going to the Baptist church and hating on the sinners of the world. Maybe I can’t give him the kind of future he deserves. Maybe I should have just turned him over to you and let you raise him. Or let Billy and Shelly take care of him, and I could have visited once in a while. Maybe y’all could have done a better job. Maybe I’m nothing more than a penis with legs who’s going to die in the gutter with a telephone pole shoved up my ass.”


Chapter 26