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

“Good luck,” I said to Jackson as he pulled into my mother’s long driveway.


“How bad could it be?” I asked with a hint of a smile as we got out.


“Bumple!” Noah exclaimed when Bumblebee ran over to greet us and sniff at Jackson’s shorts.


Papaw sat on the porch, dipping and spitting.


“I reckon I’m still not dead,” he said with a smile. “I know y’all are waiting to get your grubby hands on my safety deposit box, but I would ask you to wait until they put me under the ground and make sure I’m dead and cold and in my grave with six feet of dirt on top of me. It’s not like you haven’t stolen everything else out from under me, you fucking thieves. You still gay, Wiley?”


“Papaw, this is my friend Jackson Ledbetter,” I said, ignoring his question.


“How are you, sir?” Jackson said, putting his hand forward.


Chapter 43