Coming January 2026.
Jamie Smith’s Trojan Horses is a book for our moment: an honest, original, deeply personal investigation of the opioid crisis that uses edited and anonymized treatment records, first-person accounts, and memoir to reveal both the inadequacy of what documents and statistics can tell us about the crisis and the slipperiness of our hold on what drives and perpetuates it. It is for those already on the inside, still for now on the outside, or – like many friends and family – somewhere in between.
-Katharine Coles
Trojan Horses explores the profound costs of the opioid crisis, in particular the ways in which therapists and patients alike struggle with the trauma of addiction. Through case studies, photographs and hand-made collages, Smith’s work formally complicates and expands our idea of what constitutes lyric testimony and the recovery memoir itself. This fascinating, genre-defying work exposes the blurry line between patient and therapist, documentary and art, creating a portrait of contemporary America in which we might all see some part of ourselves and our families reflected.
—Paisley Rekdal
Tough-minded, compassionate, free of can’t or self-help bromides, this book goes all the way to the bottom of why we shoot dope, drink too much, fuck ourselves into oblivion. The interplay of the patients' voices and Smith's eloquent, understated commentary, creates an unforgettable drama of our deepest needs and compulsions—a drama so humane, so skeptical of our ability to change, so hopeful that we will.
—Tom Sleigh