For over a century, plant specialists worldwide have sought to transform healing plants in African countries into pharmaceuticals. And for equally as long, conflicts over these medicinal plants have endured, from stolen recipes and toxic tonics to unfulfilled promises of laboratory equipment and usurped personal patents. In Bitter Roots, Abena Dove Osseo-Asare draws on publicly available records and extensive interviews with scientists and healers in Ghana, Madagascar, and South Africa to interpret how African scientists and healers, rural communities, and drug companies—including Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Unilever—have sought since the 1880s to develop drugs from Africa’s medicinal plants. Osseo-Asare recalls the efforts to transform six plants into pharmaceuticals: rosy periwinkle, Asiatic pennywort, grains of paradise, Strophanthus, Cryptolepis, and Hoodia. Through the stories of each plant, she shows that herbal medicine and pharmaceutical chemistry have simultaneous and overlapping histories that cross geographic boundaries. At the same time, Osseo-Asare sheds new light on how various interests have tried to manage the rights to these healing plants and probes the challenges associated with assigning ownership to plants and their biochemical components. A fascinating examination of the history of medicine in colonial and postcolonial Africa, Bitter Roots will be indispensable for scholars of Africa; historians interested in medicine, biochemistry, and society; and policy makers concerned with drug access and patent rights.

Bitter Roots: A Bitter Root Mystery

2019 High Plains Book Award Winner for the Creative Nonfiction and Indigenous Writer categories In Bitterroot Susan Devan Harness traces her journey to understand the complexities and struggles of being an American Indian child adopted by a white couple and living in the rural American West. When Harness was fifteen years old, she questioned her adoptive father about her “real” parents. He replied that they had died in a car accident not long after she was born—except they hadn’t, as Harness would learn in a conversation with a social worker a few years later. Harness’s search for answers revolved around her need to ascertain why she was the target of racist remarks and why she seemed always to be on the outside looking in. New questions followed her through college and into her twenties when she started her own family. Meeting her biological family in her early thirties generated even more questions. In her forties Harness decided to get serious about finding answers when, conducting oral histories, she talked with other transracial adoptees. In her fifties she realized that the concept of “home” she had attributed to the reservation existed only in her imagination. Making sense of her family, the American Indian history of assimilation, and the very real—but culturally constructed—concept of race helped Harness answer the often puzzling questions of stereotypes, a sense of nonbelonging, the meaning of family, and the importance of forgiveness and self-acceptance. In the process Bitterrootalso provides a deep and rich context in which to experience life.

Drink the Bitter Root is an international story about the ethical and environmental footprint world nations are leaving in Africa in their determined efforts to destabilize and loot the continent. In the spirit of Robert Kaplan and Samantha Power, Gary Geddes sets out in search of justice, healing and reconciliation. He begins his journey at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, then travels to Rwanda, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Somaliland, crossing Lake Victoria and the Great Rift Valley, where human life began. Geddes's quest takes the form of an intimate personal travelogue. Although he confronts the dark realities of abduction, rape, mutilation and murder, drawing on painful encounters, interviews and adventures that occur along the way, Geddes also brings back amazing stories of survival and unexpected moments of grace. His poet's eye and self–deprecating humor draw us ever more deeply into the lives of some amazing Africans, while never forgetting the complicity we all feel in the face of tragic events unfolding there. In the words of author and Africanist Ian Smillie, Drink the Bitter Root is not only poignant, literate and funny, but also "a deeply textured journey without maps into the unexplored rifts of sub–Saharan Africa, the human experience, and the psyche. It's also the masterful handling of a full palette."

"Rage and Redemption," Part Four While searching for Adro, the Sangerye family find themselves trapped in a southern town full of jinoo that want them dead. Meanwhile, in New York, Blink faces a horror beyond imagination. Sylvester realizes the true nature of Adro, but will he survive long enough to do anything about it?

Bitter Truth (Book 2 of Bitter Root Mysteries) Murder in a small town is always personal. In the isolated ranching community of Lost Trails, Montana, Lacy Stillman, a rich elderly rancher has died of a heart attack in her own bed. What could be more normal than that? As Zak Waller, dispatcher with the local Sheriff’s Office, joins the town in mourning the loss of the community matriarch, some disquieting information makes Zak wonder if Lacy’s death was not what it seemed. Meanwhile, Zak's friend Tiff Masterson is overwhelmed by her mother’s escalating mental breakdown and her aunt’s stubborn denial of the problem. Tiff assumes the root of the problem is the death of her brother and father sixteen years ago. But the real atrocity goes back much further than that. When the truth is revealed in a shocking twist, Tiff’s world is turned completely upside down. The ramifications affect many of the most prominent citizens and provide the missing clue to Lacy Stillman’s murder. Perfect for fans of the British television film Broadchurch.

Her past. His secrets. They have more in common than she knows. Maisy is happily content with the life she's built for herself and her young son in small-town Prescott, Montana. Her child is thriving, her business is growing, and her family is as close as they've ever been. But when a handsome stranger walks into the lobby of her motel, her simple life is swept up in a wave of affection for his gentle heart. None of those feelings can be trusted, though. She made that mistake before with another man. The man she murdered. Hunter was a different man when he first saw Maisy Holt from afar. He took one look at her and ran in the opposite direction. But years later, he's back in Montana and unable to keep his distance. He shouldn't have tried to find her but he never was good at rejecting temptation. The promise of the good she could bring into his life is too hard to resist. Maybe if he can disguise the lies and hide the deceit, he can keep her from learning the truth. Because his only chance at a future with her is by burying his past.