Years have gone by since the death of Noah his special needs son, and Wiley Cantrell realizes it’s time to move on. He and his husband Jackson try to adopt little Tony Gorzola, a deaf boy with HIV who is emotionally traumatized.<br><br>Difficulties quickly set in. Tony is a sweet boy but very damaged by abuse and neglect. And Tony’s mother, in prison, is unwilling to relinquish her parental rights. No sooner do they get the go ahead to foster Tony when another child they had considered becomes available -- the daughter Jackson always wanted.<br><br>With two children on their hands, life is complicated -- wonderfully so. But just as things begin to settle down, Tony, his immune system compromised, falls ill with pneumonia ... and Wiley and Jackson find their little family faced with crisis once again.

Go Tell It on the Mountains

“That’s how natural selection works, dear.”


“Dad, please,” Jackson said in a tight voice.


“I’m sorry, but if your mother is a drug dealer and a whore and God knows what else, perhaps you should be selected for extinction, if only from a germ and disease and general well-being point of view. Offspring raised in such an environment have poor outcomes. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m merely pointing out how evolution works. It’s survival of the fittest, after all, not survival of the most damaged.”


“Well, there you are,” Jackson said, an angry undercurrent in his voice.


Mr. Ledbetter knew how to kill a conversation.


“This clam chowder is the bomb,” I said into the silence, lifting my eyes and looking across the table at Jackson’s mother. “Stinks to high heaven, of course, but it’s actually quite all right. Of course, they say the same thing about Ann Coulter, but that’s just a bunch of horse hockey.”


Chapter 8