Ginseng dreams

This book unfolds ginseng's past and its future through the stories of seven people whose lives have become inextricably bound to it: a huckster, a field researcher, a farmer, a ginseng "missionary," a criminal investigator, a broker, and a cancer researcher. Each of them provides a different perspective on the elusive root - and each is consumed by a different dream." Kristen Johannsen threads her way through remote woodlands in the Appalachians to observe the fragile plants slowly unfolding at various stages of a growing cycle, which takes many years and leaves ginseng vulnerable to both poachers and environmental destruction. She visits the huge commercial fields of Marathon County, Wisconsin, where, amid potato fields and paper mills, 90 percent of the country's cultivated ginseng is produced. Johannsen investigates the booming black-market ginseng trade and the struggle to save the wild root and its native habitat, and she ends her journey in the laboratories of a major medical school, where researchers are uncovering ginseng's anticancer properties.