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

“Come on, city boy,” I said, calling to him. “Don’t just sit there like a lump on a log!”


Jackson got shyly to his feet, tried to dance, but the music was unfamiliar to him.


“Hold on,” he said, crouching down to change the station, and suddenly our camp was filled with the sounds of “Boogie Oogie Oogie.” Now that he was in his element, he treated us to some cool disco moves. Noah clapped his hands together happily and immediately began to try to imitate him.


I smiled as I watched them, the entertainer in me thinking they made a good pair and could bring the house down if they wanted to. I pictured them in Mama’s living room during Noah’s upcoming birthday party. Not even Mama could turn her nose up at that. It was just too cute.


When we got tired of dancing, we built the fire high, which drove off the mosquitoes. Overhead the stars looked down on us with their immensity and mystery. A half-moon rose and slowly moved across the sky.


Chapter 47