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’m in a relationship now,” I admitted. “It’s going well. We’re creating a family. I wish the church would bless my family and stop condemning me. I wish I could go to church and not have people wondering why I go to communion since I must be in mortal sin for being a homosexual.”


“Do you want to confess your sins and receive absolution?” he asked kindly.


“I do, but I’m going to walk right out that door and sit with my boyfriend. You’re not going to stop me from loving the man that I love. If I have to go to hell for that, I guess that’s how it is.”


“I doubt that anyone is going to go to hell for loving someone else.”


“It’s Christmas,” I said. “I want to be right with the church again, but I don’t see how that’s possible. But if it is, I want to confess my sins and receive absolution. At the end of the day, I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe God is a loving God and I don’t think He’s as mad at me as the pope is.”


Chapter 92