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

“In a Northern fairy tale, you start off by saying: ‘Once upon a time’ and all that. In the South, we start off by saying: ‘Y’all ain’t going to believe this shit!’”


We headed back Sunday morning on the four-wheelers, making an unnecessary detour through the woods since Jackson had decided he liked riding the four-wheelers and wanted more wheel time.


By ten we were scrubbed and dressed and ready to go to the ten-thirty mass at St. Francis in New Albany with Mama. Jackson had never been to mass, so didn’t know what to expect. Papaw didn’t go to mass anymore, having sworn off what he referred to as the “goddamn Christless Catholics.”


While I had many fond memories of St. Francis, it was the scene of much tortured hand-wringing and endless moral conundrums.


We found an empty pew. Mama sat down on one side, Jackson on the other.


Chapter 50