This Amazon Best Book of August 2018 ranks #7 among hardback non-fiction books in the latest New York Times bestseller lists. It is also a Publishers Weekly Fall 2018 Adult Announcement issue top ten forthcoming book in the Politics and Current Events category. Beth Macy’s work as a newspaper reporter in Roanoke and her first two books, Truevine and Factory Man, set the stage for the dramatic success of this book which tells the story of who really are the conspirators who addicted America and the heroes who have valiantly struggled against it. She covers not only her Virginia metropolitan area but the coalfields to the south and west where the epidemic of gateway prescription drugs was first targeted by Big Pharma. "A harrowing, deeply compassionate dispatch from the heart of a national emergency...a masterwork of narrative journalism, interlacing stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference."―Jessica Bruder. "An impressive feat of journalism, monumental in scope and urgent in its implications...gritty and heartbreaking.” ―Jennifer Latson. "Ms. Macy focuses on southern and western Virginia, though the lessons of her narrative apply broadly...Macy embedded herself in the lives of four heartsick families whose children's lives were ravaged--and sometimes lost--because of opioid addiction...for those new to the topic there is much to learn."―Dr. Sally Satel. "Heartbreaking, exhaustively researched...a fierce indictment of racism, corporate greed and wily dealers...a terrifying, essential read."―People's Book of the Week.
New York, New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2018. 376 pages with an Index, Notes, and photos. Hardback in dust jacket