Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre

Newspaper journalists were my heroes as a girl. My ten-year-old girlfriend and I spent hours planning to turn a falling down chicken coup into an office where we would write and publish our own newspaper. I was on the school newspaper in high school. I follow a number of journalists on social media who are my heroes, and now I have one more to add to my list.

You reminded me of how much a community depends on its newspaper to tell the truth and follow through finding the truth even if it's a little scary.~from Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre

Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre won a Pulitzer Prize for his investigation into the massive opioid shipments to West Virginia. That story is presented in the book Death in Mud Lick.

I will admit this was one of those books I requested that looked interesting but when I received it I almost regretted it. I don't need to read another tragedy. We are in a pandemic already!

But I don't shirk my responsibilities and I sat down and read. I was soon immersed in the twisted history of how every safeguard failed to alert and stop the massive inflow of opioids into small towns, resulting in record overdose deaths. I looked forward to picking it up every day.

Everybody was making money--the pharmacies, doctors, patients, distributors, manufacturers. And nobody had the power to stop them.~ from Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre

This is one more story about people's lives sacrificed for money and governing authorities complicity in cover-ups. It is also the story of how a small town newspaper and one reporter prevailed to disclose the papertrail detailing responsibility.

Eyre does an amazing job marrying the personal side of the crisis and the struggle of the newspaper to keep afloat with his documentation of events. During the time of his investigation, Eyre was diagnosed with Parkinson's. It didn't stop him.

Today a Facebook friend shared a quip about shutting down the national media and watching 80% of the world's problems go away. Another Facebook friend responded, "It's your right to stay ignorant."

I am with that second friend. The media--particularly newspapers  still employing investigative reporters--are essential to a democratic society. We may not like what we are reading, we may find the news disheartening and frightening, but our alternative is ignorance.

I received a free ebook from the publisher on a Goodreads giveaway. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an excerpt and listen to an audio excerpt at
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Death-in-Mud-Lick/Eric-Eyre/9781982105334

Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic
By Eric Eyre
Scribner
Publication March 31, 2020
$18 hard cover; $12.99 ebook
ISBN 13: 9781982105310

from the publisher:

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter from the smallest newspaper ever to win the prize for investigative reporting, an urgent, riveting, and heartbreaking investigation into the corporate and governmental 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. 

The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Crime, Conspiracy, and Cover Up

The spring of my sophomore year of high school found me falling into a depression that lasted several months. Personal and family problems were behind most of it, with national events weighing down with extra pressure as we saw the deaths of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

1968 was such a bad year, I avoided thinking about it for decades; I have tried to understand it for decades more.

In those days, my dad would wake me up before he left for work at Chrysler in Highland Park, MI. I turned on my radio while dressing for school. That June 5 I learned that Robert F. Kennedy had been shot. It caught me unawares, a gut-punch that left me breathless.

I had a two-mile walk to high school. Then I ran to my friend's locker to find her devastated. Her parents didn't understand her grief, she said. I wrote in my diary that I silently prayed, "Don't let him die."

Looking back, it seems that with RFK's death the dream of a just society died, too.

(Alright, I have read biographies and I know that Bobby was no one's idea of perfection. But he did have an awakening and envisioned a better America for everyone.)

We watched the news. We saw how Sirhan Sirhan stood in front of Bobby and shot him and knew that Bobby died. Sirhan went to prison.

End of story.

Apparently, this story's end was manipulated for easy answers and for fifty years people have been searching for answers that better fit the evidence. Beginning with the fact that Sirhan was in front of RFK by several feet but RFK died from a bullet that struck him in the back of the head.

Oh, and it seems that Sirhan's gun held eight bullets but thirteen may have been fired.

Investigative journalists Tim Tate and Brad Johnson's book The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy presents an entire history of investigations into Bobby's death, drawing on 100,000 official documents and 25 years of forensic work.

I am not easily drawn to conspiracy theories. All kinds have been made over the years. Was Sirhan hypnotized? Did the government brainwash him? Were a girl in a polka dot dress and a man in a gold sweater involved? Did the police destroy evidence to hide something? Where witnesses harassed or ignored? It is all very interesting but I am not placing bets on any of them.

What seems possible is that the LAPD had decided that Sirhan had the gun and they ignored evidence and testimony and gaps that did not fit into their story.

Reading Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and The Shine Will Shine by Ray Hinton and I Can't Breathe by Matt Taibbi proves that the police do make decisions and manipulate evidence to be consistent with what they believe. It is very possible the LAPD did that fifty years ago.

Paul Schrade was behind Kennedy and was also shot. He believes there was a second gunman. He went to Sirhan and told him he believed he was innocent. "You were never behind Bob, nor was Bob's back ever exposed to you," Schrade told Sirhan.

We will never know the truth of Bobby's murder. It is one more 'unsolved mystery' for us to ponder. What is the point? my husband asked; Bobby is still dead.

It was interesting to learn about fifty years of investigation regarding Bobby's death. My interest did not lag.

The Daily Mail is serializing the book.
View the trailer for the book at https://vimeo.com/272208961?ref=tw-share

I received a free ebook from the Thistle Publishing in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.