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

“He’ll be all right,” Tonya said to me, her voice full of confidence. “He’s stronger than you think he is.”


“He never had a chance to know her,” I said.


“He knows her in his mind,” she said. “And, that’s just as real.”


“What happened, Wiley?” Mrs. Humphries asked.


I explained about the phone call from Mrs. Warren.


“Her people is First Baptist,” Mrs. Humphries observed.


“Yes,” I said, thinking absently about the odiousness of Baptist funerals.


“I’m going to take him home,” I said.


“Call if you need something,” Tonya said.


I promised I would. 48: A Mother-like Person


I called my mother and told her the news.


“Can you find out which funeral home they’re going to use?” I asked her


“You’re not going!” she exclaimed.


“Mrs. Warren asked me to,” I said, “and Kayla was Noah’s mother, after all.”


“Oh, Wiley,” she said, sighing heavily. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll call around and see what I can find out.”


Chapter 66