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

“Have you thought about it?” Jackson asked as we waited for the hot dogs to grill.


“It’s allI’ve thought about,” I admitted.


“So will you move in with me and be my love slave?”


“The first of many, I hope,” he said.


“I want to marry you, Wiley Cantrell. I want to be your husband. I want us to be a family—you, me, and the cheese-eater. Isn’t that the point of all this courting?”


“Are we still courting?” I asked with a smile.


“Don’t I have enough skin in the game yet?”


“I love it when you talk Southern,” I said.


“I hate it when you stall. I’ve been clean all summer. I’m never going back to that. I love my job and everything is going well in my life except one small detail, which is that I can’t live with the man I love. I want to wake up in the morning and see your face. Is that so wrong?”


Chapter 91