By Your Side

Linda Standish has spent thirty-three years working for the council's Unclaimed Heirs Unit, where her job is to find family for people who die with no one to claim them. She has become a friend to the friendless, and she is now looking forward to an early retirement.

First, though, there is one last case. Levi Norman was a Welshman who spent the final five years of his life on the remote Scottish island of Storrich. Linda must go there to trace whatever relatives he left behind. Why did Levi choose such an isolated place, and who was waiting for news of him somewhere else?

The journey starts badly, because Linda has to travel in a hearse alongside her arch nemesis. Once on the island, the locals both help and hinder her search as she follows the clues to a life that has ended. Along the way she makes friends she never expected and learns things about herself that she never knew.

Ruth Jones, who co-wrote Gavin and Stacey and also wrote Love Untold, fills this novel with warmth and humor. It is a story about friendship, love and community, and about second chances arriving when you least expect them.