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

“Laugh it up,” she said. “You’ll be laughing all the way to eternal hell. But I’ll be damned if you’re going to take my grandson with you.”


“You’re a trip, Mama. If you could just see how funny you are.”


“Oh, I know you are. That’s why it’s funny.”


“I am tired of you mocking our religion!”


“Your whole life is a mockery of our religion, Wiley.”


“I should hope so,” I said seriously. “You should live your life in a way that keeps the pope up at night, that’s what I say.”


“You have not heard the end of this,” she vowed, pointing a finger into my face. “If your father, God rest his soul, was still alive…”


“Well, thank God for small favors.”


A puff of angry air escaped her lips as she turned and marched off. 37: The Story of My Life


“I hope that doesn’t become a scene in one of your books,” Jackson said, referring to my mother’s visit.


Chapter 49