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

“Don’t be nosy,” her husband said.


“It’s all right,” I said. “Noah was a meth baby. He had birth defects and other stuff, so I wasn’t sure what was going on with him. He used to cry and carry on like no one’s business. ‘Meth baby rage’ and all that. But I noticed that the only time he made any noise was when he was unhappy. When he got into one of his rages, he’d just open his mouth and howl and carry on like he was dying. But the rest of the time, he never said a word. He never vocalized or did any of the goo goo gaa gaa stuff. And when he was about two years old, I began to realize he couldn’t hear me. He’d respond to me if he saw me, but otherwise he didn’t seem to be aware of me at all.”


“That’s just like Becky,” Stella said.


“But what are we going to do?” Lloyd asked, his voice full of worry. “What if she’s deaf?”


Chapter 61