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 … 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.
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This book is a refreshing mix of the crazy, the honest, the wildly inappropriate and the deep sweetness of love. This is less a romance than a book about the love of a father for his child. It is the story of survival, because you are just too stubborn and batshit crazy to quit. It is about integrity and recognizing what really counts in life, no matter how it hurts. And it’s about holding on to hope, in a corner of your battered heart, no matter how much you convince yourself there is no chance.
Wiley is a long-haired, laid-back gay Southern boy. Once upon a time he had a friend who was a girl, who liked meth and sharing with him. A book he wrote sold well enough to look like a career, and he dropped out of college. Then he decided to try sleeping with the girl, and she got pregnant, and now he has a son.
But this is not one of those typical, fluffy “gay man left with a sweet child finds true love with child-friendly boyfriend” stories. Because Wiley’s son Noah isn’t some cute plot-muppet. Noah is deaf, has minor birth defects and some developmental delays, and was born addicted to meth. As a newborn, he had to be shot up with drugs so he wouldn’t die from the withdrawal. He was born hurting, and angry and unable to understand why. He had tantrums, and screaming fits. He couldn’t hear “I love you” or “It will get better”. All he understood was touch, and patience, and love that proved itself in dirty diapers and cleaning puke, and day after day of a father doing his best. And a lot of time.
Wiley loves his son, more than anything on Earth. But he has had ten years of hell, interrupted by flashes of pure joy. His girlfriend Kayla took off the moment the baby was born, her parents offered to “take Noah off his hands, if he survived, and raise him in a good, Christian home” and when Wiley insisted on being a father, they washed their hands of both of them. He was left trying to raise a deaf, meth-affected baby with almost no help. His own family chips in sometimes, with hand-me-downs, or a birthday party. But they don’t do much day-to-day to support him, and they are ashamed of his gayness, and constantly question his fitness to parent a child. His book sales tanked, and he works minimum wage, to keep the two of them in Ramen noodles and carrot sticks.
Wiley has coped, and even in his own way has thrived. Noah is now ten, knows sign language, mostly sleeps through the night, and loves people. He’s a tiny optimist, hoping that someday his mom will love him, and that Iron Man will come to town and make his dad happy and comfortable. Wiley knows he’s done well by his boy.
He’s managed to keep a sense of humor, although it’s become a little black and biting at times, after years of having even his own family put him down. He won’t pretend to be straight, and he won’t keep his head down and his mouth shut. If his mother gives him a hard time about being gay, he’ll take her on straight out, family dinner table or no.
“Mama, why don’t you just sew up a Scarlet H and glue it on my forehead?” I asked. “H for the happy homo. Can’t we have one conversation that doesn’t involve my penis?”
Eli snorted a mouthful of mashed potatoes halfway across the table.
Into his life comes Jackson, a beautiful, gay, male pediatric nurse recently moved down from Boston. Jackson even knows how to sign to Noah. It feels like a glimpse of heaven, or at least Palm Springs. But no one can be as perfect as Jackson seems at first glance. And who would want to take on Wiley with his problems, his mouth, his poverty, crazy grandfather, homophobic family and all? Wiley’s dreams of shaking the sugar tree with this guy feel like just that – impossible dreams. And when he’s not dreaming he still has his life to live, and his son to love. Fitting in another man, in the homophobic South, is something the next generation may get to do, but Wiley is trying to be content with just keeping his head and Noah’s above water. Luckily, Jackson will also have something to say about that. At least, until he reveals his own feet of clay.
I loved this book. Sometimes I was left choking at the things that came out of the characters’ mouths into the light of day. Especially the grandfather.
“He’s crazy!”
“We don’t hide crazy,” I said, “We put it on the porch and let it entertain the neighbors.”
Which the old man sure does, in a stream-of-consciousness bullshit that is homophobic, misogynistic, paranoid, rude, defamatory, and yet somehow doesn’t have the acid to cut deep. It’s the words of Wiley’s brother, mother, and in-laws that inflict wounds on him. And his line of humor and Southern bullshit charm that he uses to deflect things don’t hide the pain he carries around. Unique, brave, honest, foul-mouthed, funny and a bit broken – Wiley is one of the most endearing MCs I’ve met in a long time. Although there were a few moments of healing that came a bit too easily at the end, I still recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who is not easily offended by the words of a crazy old man, or the occasional moral slip on the part of a strong young man swimming hard against a tide of hard times.