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 don’t know what to say,” I confessed.


“Yes, you do,” he said encouragingly.


“You want to marry me?” I asked, incredulous. “You mean, really marry me?”


“I love you, but you are so stupid sometimes,” he said with a smile. “Of course I want to marry you. And if you say yes, I will be the happiest man in the whole world and I’ll do right by you and Noah. You’ll see. You will never regret being my husband. I promise you that.”


“This is a whole new level of courting,” I said.


“This is the real deal,” Jackson said. “I’ve got some real skin in the game now, don’t I?”


“But I can’t do this,” I said, pushing the ring away.


“This must be some kind of a joke,” I said.


“It’s not a joke. I love you. What’s so hard to understand?”


“We can’t get married. It’s not even legal.”


“It’s legal in some states,” he pointed out. “And someday it will be legal here too.”


I was the verge of tears. And they weren’t happy tears.


Chapter 96