OPIOIDS AND ORGANS HC

A heartbreaking memoir about losing a father - and a sharp indictment of the healthcare and organ-donation industries.

Arizona keeps watch at the hospital bedside of her father, a man she barely knew: brain-dead after a fentanyl overdose. Doctors press her to act quickly and to cast him as a hero. Shaken, Arizona makes a decision that will haunt her for the rest of her life. As she searches for a way to deal with her father’s death - and with her responsibility as next of kin - she stumbles upon uncomfortable truths about the entanglements of the organ-donation industry with the opioid crisis.

Her parents were bohemian wild things in 1990s Montréal: he, a talented skateboarder, charming guitarist, and visual artist. She, an aspiring writer and outsider. Together they lived with other young people in the Plateau - in a chaotic apartment filled with drugs, alcohol, and black-market animals. The city’s macabre history - McGill Medical School, Mount Royal Cemetery, and the ancient specimens at the Maude Abbott Medical Museum - moves to the center as Arizona separates fact from legend.

Opioids and Organs is an unflinching critique of an industry that exploits society’s outcasts. A muted yet penetrating pastel palette and a doll-like, fairytale elegance contrast with the cruelty of the subject - and with the author’s anger.