White Trash

by JohnKing (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.25

  Ruby James is a local girl, living life to the full - the hospital where she works a microcosm of the new-town community she grew up in. While some outsiders might label her and her friends, the common people of the town, as white trash - dismissing them as a faceless mass of skinheads and bottle-blondes - Ruby knows the truth: revelling in the pubs and clubs of a thriving culture, fuelled and soothed by cold drink, warm drugs and a deep-rooted decency. For Ruby, every person is unique, with a story to tell: whether it's an angry bouncer or a retired sailor, a one-time rocker or a magic-mushroom picker. And she deals with her own ghosts her own way, aware that physical and mental health are precious, and easily stolen. The epitome of positive thinking, she sees the best in everyone at least until the day true evil comes to call. Set against a backdrop of pirate-radio stations, pink Cadillacs and motorway dreams, John King's new novel is a classic tale of the individual versus society. A vigorous celebration of everyday life and a fierce attack on zero-tolerance stereotyping, it is also, at heart, a shocking thriller that pits Ruby's home-grown morality against an ideologue's depravity.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.25

  A classic tale of good against evil, John King's new novel pits nurse against consultant; a working-class woman against an upper-middle-class man. Ruby is a locally-born nurse, who enjoys life to the full, lives in the present and likes to find the best in everyone. For her, the hospital in which she works is society in microcosm: a chaotic, exciting landscape of work and play where everyone has a story to tell. For Mr Jeffries, the consultant, however, the patients he attends and the staff he has to deal with are all tarred with the same brush: an ignorant, lazy, drunken, violent, drug-crazed rabble. White trash. One of his main responsibilities is to allocate resources and cut down on expenditure; what he sees as streamlining is, in effect, a terrifying policy of social cleansing. Arrogant and elitist, Jeffries hankers after a class system that has gone - but that he wants reestablished. When Joy becomes suspicious about the death of a patient, a clash between the two is, suddenly, inevitable.