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

Without waiting for me to respond, he curled up in my arms, closed his eyes, and was quickly asleep. 47: Voice Mail


After my shift at FoodWorld on Friday, I found two voice mails on my phone. The first was from Jackson, asking me again to call him, to not shut him out. The other was from Mrs. Warren, tearfully asking me to get back to her and quickly. I sat in my station wagon in the blazing afternoon heat of the FoodWorld parking lot, the air conditioner on full blast, and punched in her number.


“Mrs. Warren, it’s Wiley. I’m returning your phone call.”


“Kayla’s dead, Wiley. She overdosed.”


“I’m sorry,” I said somewhat automatically.


“We think she might have done it on purpose,” she added.


It took me a while to process what she had said, what it meant, not simply to me but to Noah.


Chapter 65