Ruby's Spoon

When Isa Fly appears in the doorway of Captin Len's Fish Fry Shop, fourteen-year-old Ruby is instantly entranced. Isa comes from the coast: the air is fresh there, unlike land-locked Cradle Cross, where the button furnaces pump the foul smell of burnt animal flesh into the air and the stinking network of canals lie festering. Isa is on the hunt for a missing person, and Ruby is eager to help, convinced she will be repaid with an adventure at sea. But some of the townsfolk are instantly suspicious of the outsider with her shock of white hair and glinting mirrored skirts. They have their own lost relatives to mourn, and don't take kindly to Isa's ability to inveigle their Ruby into her game. Undaunted, Ruby introduces Isa to Truda Blick, the bluestocking graduate who has just inherited the town's largest factory. But Blickses is on the verge of collapse, and lay-offs look likely. The town is on the brink of riot. All the trouble, it seems, started when Isa Fly arrived in Cradle Cross... and Ruby thinks she may have solved the mystery. As the townsfolk close in, their atavistic impulses are barely contained by 1930s convention. Isa, Truda, Ruby: all are held in judgement, and their entrapment demands a suitably dramatic conclusion.