Bull Sugar

Alyson Soule is a novice journalist working for a Florida newspaper. A hospital calls to inform her that her forty-one-year-old mother has overdosed again. Virgie Soule's addiction is related to her secret past, which Alyson is determined to uncover. Back when Virgie was a college student, she volunteered to spend the summer in Belle Glade, Florida, helping the families of the sugar cane fieldworkers. She found them used clothing and donated food, and taught the children to read. And she fell in love with a fellow volunteer, a Harvard Law grad training to do foreign service work. Al Gomez also wanted to help the sugar cane workers, who led desperate lives. Together, Virgie and Al became involved in plans for a worker protest over unfair pay. But Al disappeared and Virgie returned to her parents' house, her world a much darker place. Now Alyson wants to know what happened to Al and to her mother back in 1986. In seeking answers, she learns about the plight of the sugar cane workers. The owners of the US sugar companies are some of the world's richest people. They've made their billions on the backs of the world's poorest people. In addition to human rights violations and corruption, Big Sugar has made significant contributions to environmental destruction and global ill health. Sugar cane fields take up thousands of acres of Florida land. The waste and runoff from the cane fields are the source of serious pollution. Drinking water in the state is contaminated, fish and aquatic life die, wildlife and sea grass are threatened. Bull Sugar fictionalizes true events to show the kind of insidious social injustice exhibited by Big Sugar, and to illustrate the ongoing damage caused to the environment and people of Florida. Bull Sugar is eco-fiction for readers age 12 and up.