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

“Memaw says you talk like a damned Yankee—” she observed.


“Mary, watch your mouth and go fetch the boys,” Bill said, cutting her off.


“I heard you the first time, Daddy!”


“Well, do it then, damn it!” he snapped.


She went to the edge of the porch, screamed out, “Eli! Josh! Time to eat!”


She turned back to us, smiling sweetly.


“Hell of a set of lungs on that one,” Papaw said.


“Bye,” she said, twirling around and heading back inside.


“She’s a pretty pain in my ass,” Bill said.


Bill spit out his chew and we followed him inside.


We arranged ourselves around the table, Jackson and myself with Noah between us on one side, Bill and Shelly on the other with Mary in the middle, Papaw at the foot of the table, Mama at the head, the boys squeezing themselves in where they could.


“You and you goddamn prayers,” Papaw said.


Chapter 52