Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opoid Crisis
Eric Eyre, 2020
Scribner
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781982105310
Summary
From a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter from the smallest newspaper ever to win the prize in the investigative reporting category, an urgent, riveting, and heartbreaking investigation into the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities.
Death in Mud Lick is the story of a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, that distributed 12 million opioid pain pills in three years to a town with a population of 382 people—and of one woman, desperate for justice, after losing her brother to overdose.
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 work of deep reporting and personal conviction, 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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Broad Axe, Pennsylvania
• Education—B.A., Loyola University-New Orleans; M.A., University of South Florida
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize-Investigative Reporting
• Currently—lives in Charleston, West Virginia
Eric Eyre has been a newspaper reporter in West Virginia since 1998. In 2017, his investigation into massive shipments of opioids to the state’s southern coalfields was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia, with his wife and son.
Book Reviews
Powerful …. [Eyre] writes with candor and gravity…. [Death in Mud Lick] is the work of an author who understands that objectivity is not the same as bland neutrality. I expect it will be taught to aspiring reporters for many years to come. It's the story of an epidemic; it's also the story of a newspaper.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Death in Mud Lick is a product of one reporter’s sustained outrage: a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligence."
Washington Post
At the Gazette-Mail, Eyre’s career has been the stuff of quiet legend…. Eyre served his community in a time of need. With his new book, he took the death of a coal miner, William (Bull) Preece, found dead in a trailer in Mud Lick amid a residue of crushed pills, and told the how and the why. His reporting led to restrictions on prescriptions, greater tracking, more transparency. He shamed an industry and saved lives. Working at a small newspaper, Eyre made a big difference.
NewYorker.com
[An] important new book …. Death in Mud Lick is more than a takedown of the out-of-state predators who exploited West Virginians for obscene profit; it’s a 300-page rebuttal to those who dismiss honest reporting as #fakenews, or claim that journalism doesn’t matter… [and] a real-life legal thriller that barrels along like a runaway coal truck on Horsepen Mountain.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(Starred review) [R]iveting…. As Eyre labored… to pry information from obfuscating drug firms… he was also contending with Parkinson’s disease…. Packed with colorful details…, this page-turning journalistic thriller shines a brilliant spotlight on a national tragedy.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Eyre… exposes inadequate DEA oversight, blatant conflicts of interest…. The book ends with an unresolved question: Is the multimillion dollar settlement from drug companies enough?… Timely and well documented. —Antoinette Brinkman, formerly with Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Library Journal
(Starred review) Compellingly told…. [A] tale of compassionate people deeply wronged and a dogged journalist who won't stand for it.
Booklist
[D]isturbing, moving, and heart-wrenching…. [H]ow time-consuming, budget-busting investigative journalism functions despite circumstances that mitigate against it. Timely, depressing, engrossing reportage on an issue that can't receive too much attention.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for DEATH IN MUD LICK … then take off on your own:
1. Author Eric Eyre packs his book with a fair amount of statistical data; nonetheless, or perhaps because of the data, Death in Mud Lick is shocking. What numbers stunned you most?
2. Discuss the role Debbie Preece played in cracking open this tragedy by initiating a wrongful-death lawsuit. Would you have had the courage or tenacity or energy she had? Consider, too, the doggedness of Eric Eyre, who, while investigating the roots of the opioid epidemic, was suffering from the onset of Parkinson's Disease.
3. Talk about West Virginia's opioid addiction, in terms of both its sheer numbers and its tragic toll on human life. How did it even get started?
4. Who are the big villains here? There are plenty. Talk about the pharmacists, doctors, and companies—all of whom profited—as well as the shameful lack of oversight on the part of government agencies.
5. William Morrisey, in particular, is targeted in Eyre's account. Explain his role.
6. Death in Mud Lick is also the story of a small town newspaper. What is happening to local papers, and how does this book reveal the importance local journalism?
7. Eyre ends his book with the question of whether or not a multi-million-dollar settlement from drug companies is sufficient. What is your opinion?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)