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 surprised. I dohave a conscience.”


“My conscience tells me it’s wrong to have casual sex with anybody and everybody. And I never have. Well, at least not very often. I think you should love somebody before you get your willy out.”


“It’s kind of weird talking about sex with you,” I said.


“Don’t make a habit of it. I’ve got enough gray hair as it is. How is your friend?”


“I wouldn’t know. I don’t talk to him anymore.”


“He’s a drug addict. I found a bunch of prescription medications in his bathroom. They didn’t have labels so I’m assuming he stole them from the pharmacy at the hospital.”


“Yet more proof that I have a conscience,” I said. “I would never in a million years let someone like that hang around Noah. He was a good kisser, though. Have to give him credit for that.”


Chapter 68