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

“Oh my God,” he whispered, horrified.


“Do you believe everything you hear?” I asked. “You won’t last long in the South if you do.”


“That’s what we do, Yankee boy. Poetic license and all that.”


“You should have seen your face! I don’t even have a brother named Jerry.”


“Might have to get a permission slip from your mama.”


“You are so going to pay for this.”


“Are you lying about the wild pigs, too?”


“There’s not that many of them. You’d have to go really deep into the forest. I’ve never seen any around here. If you do see one, stay away. That’s the best advice. They might not take your leg off, but they will take a bite out of you. My friend Bo had just finished skinny dipping when one of those bastards came trotting out of the woods and bit his dick clean off.”


Chapter 46