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 turned to him and drew a smile on my lips.


I thought I might actually die before two o’clock rolled around.


At five minutes to two, Jackson Ledbetter showed up in my line carrying a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates.


“How are ya?” I asked automatically.


“You’d know if you returned my calls,” he said easily.


I ran his flowers and chocolates through my scanner.


“They’re not for me, they’re for you,” he said, opening his wallet and finding a credit card.


“You don’t have to do that,” I said.


“You misunderstand me,” I said. “‘You don’t have to do that’ is a Southern expression for ‘stop embarrassing me, you frikkin’ bastard you.’”


“Is it really?” he asked with a smile.


I handed the flowers to Tyrone, put the chocolates in a bag myself, and handed them to Jackson, along with his receipt.


Chapter 69