Summary

Quinones begins his investigation into the nation’s heroin epidemic by introducing the seemingly all-American Schoonover family from Portsmouth, Ohio, whose son Matt died of a heroin overdose at the age of twenty-one. Despite privileged academic opportunities, a supportive family, and access to one of his area’s best rehab facilities, Matt was unable to beat his addiction. Matt’s parents found themselves, in Quinones’ opinion, “anguished and bewildered” at the plethora of questions surrounding their son’s addiction and resulting death, primarily, “how could this have happened?” (9). With a self-assured, “here’s how,” Quinones claims that his book will answer this frustratingly stubborn question which seems common among all those affected by the heroin epidemic (9). Matt Schoonover overdosed on black tar heroin trafficked from a village called Xalisco in the small, typically unheard-of Mexican state of Nayarit.

Like the introduction of Enrique, Quinones...