Release Date:- 2020-03-31
Reviews Counts:- 32
User Average Rating:- 4.5
Availability:- In Stock
Kind:- ebook
A New York Times Criticsā Top Ten Book of the Year * 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime * A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year
From a Pulitzer Prizeāwinning investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a āpowerful,ā (The New York Times) urgent, and heartbreaking account of the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities.
In a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, 12 million opioid pain pills were distributed in just three years to a town with a population of 382 people. One woman, after losing her brother to overdose, was desperate for justice. Debbie Preeceās fight for accountability for her brotherās death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of Americaās largest drug companiesāand won him a Pulitzer Prize.
Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyreās local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story.
Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugsāresulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive changeāand won.
āA product of one reporterās sustained outrage [and] a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligenceā (The Washington Post) Eric Eyreās intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginiaāand the nationāto this day.