RHUBARB, RHUBARB: A Passengers Novela

RHUBARB, RHUBARB Dedicated to small traders in North Shields and elsewhere, especially those who are fighting to help put food on people's tables. North Shields, April 2020. Ruth Swan loses her job, her partner, and his mother in the space of one terrible month. >Then, one morning at ten past four, the rhubarb starts talking. Ruth knows how that sounds. But the voices sound exactly like Davey and Jean. She hears them bickering, and planning, and they seem determined to get Ruth back on her feet. Then, when a woman leans over the fence and asks to buy some rhubarb, something starts that Ruth could never have planned: a barrow, an honesty box, a borrowed van, a town full of people who can't get to the shops, and a name created by a four-year-old that sticks. Either she's grieving, or she's haunted. She hasn't got the money or time to find out which. A comic, big-hearted story about loss, rhubarb, and the voices that keep us company, for anyone who's ever talked to someone who couldn't answer back.