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

I didn’t answer. I went into the living room, collected Noah.


Jackson trailed after me, pleading, increasingly upset.


“You’re just going to leave?” he asked, incredulous. “Just like that? Won’t you give me a chance?”


I put my hands on Noah’s shoulders and held him close to me, as if he were Exhibit A to explain the reason why I merely shook my head.


Noah was confused as I steered him out the door. 45: Are You Mad?


I went to my room and shut the door. I felt humiliated, betrayed, and somewhere beneath that I felt foolish and stupid and far too trusting. I turned on the fan, opened the window, sat on the bed, feeling miserable, hot, ill at ease.


My first boyfriend was an alcoholic, like my father. Exactly like my father. A kind man, usually, but when he got drunk, the shit hit the fan…


Chapter 64