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Title details for Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre - Wait list

Death in Mud Lick

A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic

by Eric Eyre
Michael David Axtell
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A New York Times Critics' Top Ten Book of the Year * 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime * A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a "powerful," (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 Preece's fight for accountability for her brother's 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 America's largest drug companies—and 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 Eyre's 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 drugs—resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change—and won.

"A product of one reporter's sustained outrage [and] a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligence" (The Washington Post) Eric Eyre's intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia—and the nation—to this day.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    March 31, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781797104683
      • File size: 234212 KB
      • Duration: 08:07:56

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Eric Eyre's nose for investigative journalism and conversational writing style are enhanced by narrator Michael David Axtell's energy, empathy, and appropriate tone of outrage. Why does a pharmacy in a town of 382 people in West Virginia need nine million pain pills over a two-year period? There is plenty of blame to go around for the opioid crisis, with pharmaceutical companies, over-prescribing doctors, pharmacists, politicians, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and even addicts in the mix. Writing for a small newspaper in West Virginia, Eyre uncovers another villain: the wholesale drug distributors who are transporting prescription drugs from pharmaceutical companies to pharmacies. Axtell fully inhabits Eyre's sense of injustice and maintains suspense as he and his newspaper spend years seeking records from these drug distribution companies. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 13, 2020
      Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter Eyre expands his Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation into the role of pharmaceutical distribution companies in West Virginia’s opioid epidemic in this riveting and essential debut. Eyre begins by relating the 2005 overdose death of former coal miner William “Bull” Preece, who became hooked on Oxycontin and Lortab after suffering a back injury on the job. His sister, Debbie, became an anti-opioid crusader and her lawyers eventually contacted Eyre, who in 2013 was covering West Virginia’s lawsuit against wholesale drug distributors, including Fortune 500 companies Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, for flooding the market with pain pills. Eyre eloquently interweaves the story of Debbie’s pursuit of justice on behalf of her brother with his own battles against West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey, whose ties to the pharmaceutical industry called into question his commitment to pursuing the state’s lawsuit. As Eyre labored—ultimately successfully—to pry information from obfuscating drug firms and government agencies, he was also contending with Parkinson’s disease and his small-town newspaper’s financial woes. Packed with colorful details and startling statistics, this page-turning journalistic thriller shines a brilliant spotlight on a national tragedy. Agent: Frances Coady, Aragi Inc.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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