"Does what ‘Fast Food Nation’ did for fast food to Black Tar Heroin and oxycodone . . . A stunning journalistic journey that follows the history and narrative trajectories that lead to this entirely new style of cultivating drug addiction . . . I just love this book." - Marc Maron
“The most original writer on Mexico and the border out there.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
“Over the last 15 years, he has filed the best dispatches about Mexican migration and its effects on the United States and Mexico, bar none.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Journalist Quinones weaves an extraordinary story, including the personal journeys of the addicted, the drug traffickers, law enforcement, and scores of families affected by the scourge, as he details the social, economic, and political forces that eventually destroyed communities in the American heartland and continues to have a resounding impact.” —starred review, Booklist
“Quinones' research ensures that there is something legitimately interesting (and frequently horrifying) on every page. A-.” —Entertainment Weekly
“[A] compelling examination . . . a driven and important narrative.” —Wall Street Journal
“In Dreamland, former Los Angeles Times reporter Sam Quinones deftly recounts how a flood of prescription pain meds, along with black tar heroin from Nayarit, Mexico, transformed the once-vital blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, and other American communities into heartlands of addiction. With prose direct yet empathic, he interweaves the stories of Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics agents, and small-town folks whose lives were upended by the deluge of drugs, leaving them shaking their heads, wondering how they could possibly have resisted.” —Mother Jones
“Smack is back in the news as heroin use spikes and busts pile up at the border, making Dreamland a timely book. Veteran journalist and storyteller Sam Quinones provides investigative reporting to explain the latest surge. But he also goes way deeper; he tells the social and human stories at the heart of the opiate trade and how it tortures the souls of America and Mexico.” —Ioan Grillo, author of EL NARCO
“Dreamland spreads out like a transnational episode of The Wire, alternately maddening, thrilling, depressing, and with writing as sharp and insightful as a razor blade. You cannot understand our drug war and Mexican immigration to the United States without reading this book.” —Gustavo Arellano, syndicated columnist ¡Ask a Mexican!
“Quinones is a veteran journalist and expert storyteller long steeped in the demi-monde of Mexican-American bordercrossings. Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic is an intricate jigsaw puzzle piecing together his findings from intensive investigation of the unprecedented spread of heroin addiction throughout the United States over the past two decades . . . Dreamland offers an eye-opening, enlightening and mesmerizing account of one of the most important stories of the last few decades . . . Quinones is a master storyteller, with a knack of bringing hundreds of characters to life . . . Dreamland stands as a model of meticulous investigative reporting providing important insights not only the current opiate epidemic but also into the sometimes negative symbiosis between our country and our neighbors to the south.” —New York Journal of Books
"Quinones recounts individual talesfrom junkies in Portland, Ore., to pill mills in Appalachia to entrepreneurial heroin traffickers from small-town Mexicoto describe a “catastrophic synergy” in which over-prescription of opioid painkillers begets addicts, many of whom then turn to heroin, which is cheaper and just as ubiquitous." —Best Books of 2015, Boston Globe
“Unflinching . . . compellingly investigated.” —Kirkus
"The path of heroin from America’s urban slums to its trim suburban subdivisions is traced by a Los Angeles Times reporter. Quinones’ deeply researched and readable book says well-heeled addicts got hooked first on pain-killing medications like OxyContinbut then switched to much cheaper Mexican heroin, feeding a problem across the nation." —Best Books of 2015, St. Louis Dispatch
“Fascinating . . . a harrowing, eye-opening look at two sides of the same coin, the legal and illegal faces of addictive painkillers and their insidious power.” —Publishers Weekly
“A haunting tale of opiate abuse in the heartland . . . Using expert storytelling and exhaustive detail, Quinones chronicles the perfect storm of circumstances that cleared the way for the Mexican narcotic to infiltrate our small and midsize communities over the last two decades.” —Kansas City Star
“Fascinating.” —Salon
"You won’t find this story told better anywhere else, from the economic hollowing-out of the middle class to the greedy and reckless marketing of pharmaceutical opiates to the remarkable entrepreneurial industry of the residents of the obscure Mexican state of Nayarit . . . Dreamlandtrue crime, sociology, and exposéilluminates a catastrophe unfolding all around us, right now." —Laura Miller’s 10 Favorite Books of 2015, Slate
"Dreamland is at once a heartbreaking narrative about the individuals in the grips of addiction, and a thorough history of how that addiction was made possible by a variety of key players. Featuring voices from every corner of the crisis, including pharmaceutical bigwigs, young Mexican drug runners, police, doctors, addicts, survivors, and families touched by epidemic, Dreamland is a must-read for anyone grappling with the story of heroin addiction in the United States." - Bustle
“The must-read book about America's heroin crisis . . . Quinones combines thorough research with superlative narrative skills to produce a horrifying but compulsively readable book about opiate addiction . . . a book that every American should read. And I state that without reservation . . . This book is as much of a page-turner as a good mystery, as well as being thoroughly and disturbingly illuminating about a national crisis.” —Christian Science Monitor
“A gripping read and hard-hitting account of a ubiquitous plague that has flown under the radar.” —Portland Business Journal
“Quinones's absorbing narrative is deep in research, on-site reporting, personal interviews and insight. Spanning the central U.S. and crossing the Mexican border, Dreamland adroitly unsnarls the tangled business that feeds a growing lust for chemical euphoria and relief.” —Shelf Awareness
"Every so often I read a work of narrative nonfiction that makes me want to get up and preach: Read this true story! Such is Sam Quinones’ astonishing work of reporting and writing, Dreamland: the True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic." —Seattle Times
“Everybody should read this book. Everybody.” —Rod Dreher, The American Conservative
“An important frame of reference for understanding America’s opiate epidemic.” —Portland Press Herald
"[A] powerful investigation into the explosion of heroin abuse in suburban America that combines skillful reporting and strong research with a superb narrative." —The Spectator
"Compulsively readable." - A Doctor's Guide to Books, New York Times Book Review
02/02/2015
In this fascinating, often horrifying investigation, journalist Quinones (True Tales from Another Mexico) delves into the heart of America’s obsession with opiates like heroin, morphine, and OxyContin. He looks at how aggressive marketing and irresponsible business tactics led to the widespread use of addictive prescription painkillers (especially OxyContin) and how Mexican drug cartels introduced black tar heroin into small towns and vulnerable areas around the U.S. The story of the so-called Xalisco Boys, the source of so much misery and exploitation, unfolds with grim efficiency under Quinone’s scrutiny. He doesn’t hold back as he describes how widespread addiction and pill mills devastated entire communities, such as the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio. Through extensive interviews and research, Quinone gives a very human perspective to this topic, telling the tales of addicts and pushers, researchers and cops alike. While some of the threads become repetitive, this remains a harrowing, eye-opening look at two sides of the same coin, the legal and illegal faces of addictive painkillers and their insidious power. Agent: Stephany Evans, FinePrint Literary Management. (Apr.)
11/15/2014
In the 1990s, pain medications were on their way to hooking millions of Americans, and black-tar heroin, a cheap and powerful form of the drug produced in Mexico independent of the drug cartels, began devastating small heartland communities throughout the country. Former Los Angeles Times reporter Quinones pairs the two phenomena as a study in addiction, the power of overwhelmingly persuasive marketing, and a huge social problem in America today.
2015-01-21
Discouraging, unflinching dispatches from America's enduring opiate-abuse epidemic. Veteran freelance journalist Quinones (Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration, 2007, etc.) cogently captures the essence of the festering war on drugs throughout the 1990s. He focuses on the market for black tar heroin, a cheap, potent, semiprocessed drug smuggled into the United States from Nayarit, a state on the Pacific coast of Mexico. The author charts its dissemination throughout American heartland cities like Columbus and Portsmouth, Ohio, home to a huge, family-friendly swimming pool named Dreamland, which closed in 1993, after which opiates "made easy work of a landscape stripped of any communal girding." Assembling history through varying locales and personal portraits, Quinones follows a palpable trail of heartbreak, misery and the eventual demise of seemingly harmless people "shape-shifted into lying, thieving slaves to an unseen molecule." The author provides an insider's glimpse into the drug trade machine, examining the evolution of medical narcotic destigmatization, the OxyContin-heroin correlation and the machinations of manipulative pharmaceutical companies. His profiles include a West Virginia father burying his overdosed son, a diabolically resourceful drug dealer dubbed "the Man," and "Enrique," a Mexican citizen who entered the drug trade as a dealer for his uncle at 14. Perhaps most intriguing is the author's vivid dissection of the "cross-cultural heroin deal," consisting of an interconnected, hive-minded "retail system" of telephone operators, dealers (popularly known as the "Xalisco Boys") and customers; everything is efficiently and covertly marketed "like a pizza delivery service" and franchised nationwide with precision. The author's text, the result of a five-year endeavor of remote research and in-person interviews, offers a sweeping vantage point of the nation's ever expanding drug problem. Though initially disjointed, these frustrating and undeniably disheartening scenarios eventually dovetail into a disturbing tapestry of abuse, addiction and death. Thankfully, for a fortunate few, rebirth is possible. A compellingly investigated, relentlessly gloomy report on the drug distribution industry.