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

“Sit down,” Bill said, looking up to Shelly with a hard expression in his eyes.


“She’s right, Billy,” Mama said. “There’s a time and a place for everything, and this is not the time or the place.”


“You’re the one who called me with your panties in a wad about them skinny-dipping, Mama,” Bill pointed out, glaring at her.


“We have company,” Mama said. “Please, Mr. Ledbetter, sit down. We’re not always like this. We get a little spirited sometimes.”


Jackson sat down rather reluctantly, looked at me, and grimaced.


There was a long silence as we resumed eating.


Bill was still very angry, though, and it wasn’t long before he put his fork down and gave me a cold, hard stare.


“You want to know the truth?” he asked quietly.


When we started talking about “the truth,” the shit was about to splatter.


“I’m about a cunt hair away from hiring a lawyer and having you declared an unfit parent,” Bill said.


Chapter 55