Beginning in 1699, explore the page-turning 400 year saga of the acquisition of riches by rapacious mercenaries inured to human suffering. Weaving memoir, medicine, and mob tactics, Pennington disabuses us of the notion that our present crisis of obesity, chronic disease, and a broken healthcare system is inevitable, inescapable and intractable. Using her own history as a recovered addict, she offers the reader a way out of the centuries-long enslavement born of sugar cultivation and dependency.