Side Effects Are Minimal

A Novel

Laura Essay

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• eBook ISBN:
  9781647427054
• Year: 2024

When ambitious attorney Claire Hewitt is asked to represent the Satoris, one of Philadelphia’s most prominent families, in a lawsuit over the death of their daughter, she is thrust into an opioid nightmare with deadly impact—and not for the first time. Claire’s guilt for not saving her sister, Molly, has not subsided in the twenty years since Molly’s almost certainly opioid-related death. Now, with this new assignment, her guilt comes full circle. Who was really at fault in Molly’s death? And who is at fault now?

What begins as a quest for truth becomes infinitely more complicated as Claire struggles to balance her desire for justice with the Satoris’ thirst for revenge. She knows she needs to expose the greed that transforms legal opioid production into illicit fabrications and the neglect that is the breaking point between physicians and their patients. But there are powerful people who will seemingly stop at nothing to prevent these truths from seeing the light of day, and she is sabotaged at every turn. Can she push past the obstacles in her way to build a winning case?

Based on true events, Side Effects Are Minimal is about a corrupt pharmaceutical industry, the guilt of physicians prescribing the opioids that kill, and the pain experienced by families who’ve lost loved ones to an epidemic that has brought the United States to its knees.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. First Chair
• 2. Previous Bad Acts
• 3. Dining on Lombard
• 4. Back Scratch
• 5. Believe Me, You Don’t
• 6. Elusive Answers
• 7. Smoldering Embers
• 8. Not So Fast
• 9. Recreation for Aristocrats
• 10. The Secret Room
• 11. Deceptive Charade
• 12. Silver Bullet
• 13. No! No! No!
• 14. Let It Go
• 15. Paper Cuts
• 16. Opiophilia
• 17. Muddied Waters
• 18. Six Degrees of Separation
• 19. Prize Money
• 20. Iatrogenic Addiction
• 21. Overpromoted and Overprescribed
• 22. Red Blossoms
• 23. Random Act
• 24. No Friend of Mine
• 25. Poppy
• 26. Fishing Hats and Plush Toys
• 27. Margo’s Tears
• 28. Defiant Schoolgirl
• 29. Sweet Baby Girl
• Opioids: What We Should Know
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Selected Titles from She Writes Press