Ruby's is about touch, feel, and emotion, treating her patients with respect while living out her unspoken belief that everyone has an equal right to care and attention. Jeffreys' existence is based on cold reason, elitism, and an obsession with the rationing of healthcare that leads him to make extreme life-and-death decisions. Her unfailingly positive and inclusive take on life is in stark contrast to the exclusive viewpoint of the handsomely paid Jeffreys, who spends his hours in the glow of a computer screen and prefers the company of statistics to human beings. Working-class Ruby manages to keep her dignity, sense of humour, and sanity despite a life of daily struggle that includes wrestling with the pain of having a mother with Alzheimer's. Their paths rarely cross, but the calculating outlook of Jeffreys begins to have terrible ramifications, and Ruby eventually becomes entangled in his web. Set in an unnamed new town on the outskirts of London, White Trash records the world as seen through the eyes of a hard-working ward nurse, Ruby James, and the remote, at times almost ghostly, administrator Jonathan Jeffreys, who drifts through her hospital. The paperback edition of the book, released by Vintage, carries the following quote by Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, on its cover: "Complete and unique, all stitched up and marvellous, the two sides of the equation brought together, realistic yet philosophical." The quote also appears on the US edition of the novel (2016), which includes an introduction by the author-"From Cradle to Grave". White Trash is the fifth novel by English author John King, first published in 2001 by Jonathan Cape.
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