



From the labs and marketing departments of big pharma to local doctor’s offices wealthy suburbs to distressed small communities in Central Appalachia from distant cities to once-idyllic farm towns the spread of opioid addiction follows a tortuous trajectory that illustrates how this crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched.īeginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy sets out to answer a grieving mother’s question-why her only son died-and comes away with a gripping, unputdownable story of greed and need. In this extraordinary work, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of a national drama that has unfolded over two decades.
