Macy tells these stories largely by ceding the stage to her subjects, addicts and workers alike. One of her strengths as a journalist is doing the reporting and then knowing when to get out of the way. Raising Lazarus, like Dopesick, never turns into The Beth Macy Show. The stories occasionally come a little fast and furious, making it difficult to tell one player from another, but everybody gets a say, even the Kiwanis Club president who suggests the overdosed be left to die so their organs can be harvested.

Macy continues this essential conversation in Raising Lazarus. Her fourth book zeroes in on why this crisis continues and how things can change, and the facts she presents will enlighten you and likely change your opinions on many important overdose-related issues.

... [Macy] offers hope, however muted, that the opioid epidemic is indeed a solvable problem.

When you think about it, a lot of good narrative journalism is sought by readers already sharing the writer's views and wishing to understand more. A genre that might be slighted as 'preaching to the choir' is potent for readers seeking to organize their thinking and contribute to solving social problems.

In many ways, the new book represents Macy, one of the pre-eminent chroniclers of the nation’s opioid epidemic, at her full-bore fearless best. Heartsick and determined, she grills drug policy scholars and former drug czars alike.

While many Americans may feel that justice has been served, masks have been ripped off and a sense of normalcy can resume, Macy proves in her skewering yet inspirational book that we are nowhere close to ending the epidemic that has cost us well over a million lives.

... a passionate account.

... another damning indictment of the Sackler family.