Food For Thought

If you like hamburgers medium-rare, Jeff Benedict’s latest book Poisoned! could seriously diminish your appetite. But while a book about America’s first serious foodborne E. coli outbreak doesn’t sound like it would be “your perfect beach book,” that’s exactly how The New York Times described this locally-born author’s “completely gripping” medical-legal nonfiction thriller.

Benedict, a New London-born investigative journalist, was at Waterford Public Library last night promoting his latest bestseller, Poisoned! It’s been a while since Benedict came home for a visit and, with a nod to his many friends in the audience, he noted that he’s back now with older children and less hair. But he said, “It’s really great to be home and back in the library that was my boyhood library.”

When his first book, Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women, came out in 1997, Benedict recalled, one of his earliest book-signings was at Waterford Public Library. And though Benedict said he loves living on the Civil War-era farm he calls home in Virginia--where he teaches writing and mass media at Southern Virginia University--he told the audience, “My heart will always reside here.”

Indeed, New London County has inspired two of Benedict’s best-known books to date. The first, Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World’s Largest Casino, a book about the Mashantucket Pequot, was published by HarperCollins in 2000. The second, Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage, about the eminent domain battle of Kelo v. New London, was published by Grand Central Publishing in 2009 and is soon to be made into a movie.

Benedict says his latest book was a bit of a departure for him. “It’s a book I never set out to write,” Benedict said. “I need a story to tell and I just didn’t see much of a story in food. Like most Americans, I ate food based on taste and cost.”

Benedict credits his wife for his change of heart. As she set about reviving the defunct farm they moved to in Virginia, he came to appreciate what was involved in organic farming and he began to think that perhaps there was a story to be told after all.

After researching the topic of food safety, he decided to take a look at the 1993 E. coli outbreak in Seattle that sickened about 700 people, mostly children, who ate undercooked contaminated burgers sold by the fast-food chain Jack in the Box. The outbreak, which killed four people, resulted in a multi-million dollar lawsuit and changed the way the United States regulates the food industry. That wasn’t what drew Benedict to the story, however.

As an author, Benedict said, he’s always on the lookout for good characters and here he found them in spades. There was William Marler, the lead attorney in the case who met Benedict at the ferry to Bainbridge Island, Seattle, in a red VW bug convertible bearing the license plate “E. Coli.” Benedict said Marler’s life story was so compelling that it initially filled the first eight chapters of his book.

There was lead plaintiff, Brianne Kiner, whose daughter recovered from the E. coli outbreak--albeit with lifelong health effects--after spending 40 days in a coma. Then there was Roni Rudolph, who made the agonizing decision to disconnect her daughter, Lauren, from life support after doctors told her the E. coli infection had rendered her effectively brain dead.

Benedict was so moved by their story that he dedicated Poisoned! to Roni and Lauren. Talking to Roni, Benedict said, "was one of the hardest interviews I've ever done. I was bawling. She was bawling. I wanted to make a statement that I thought she'd made the right decision."   

Benedict admits he got lucky with the timing of his latest book. His editors at HarperCollins, which had published his previous books, rejected his idea for a book on food safety because they said the 1993 E. coli outbreak in Seattle wasn’t timely. The recent outbreak of E. coli in Germany, which made headlines around the world just one week after Poisoned! hit the stands, changed that.

“Suddenly I have eight interviews on NPR and The New York Times calls and says we want to review your book!” said Benedict. Of the nine books he’d written before this, Benedict said, only one had ever been reviewed by the Times, which in the literary world is a major coup. That this was the first book he’d published under his own imprint, Inspire Books, made the achievement all the sweeter.

Benedict said he’d long been looking for an excuse to start his own publishing company but it wasn’t until other publishers rejected Poisoned! that he found a reason to do it. This was a book he felt passionately about, he said, and he knew if he didn’t publish it, no one else would.

Launching his own imprint was, “intimidating and a little overwhelming at times,” Benedict said. However, he added, it’s made this book, “a little more dear to me than anything I’ve ever done. It’s like the first time you kiss a girl. You don’t forget it.”