The Testers: What the Poison Remembered

A Novel by Gene Scott They said she overdosed. Grace knows better—her grandmother was executed for remembering too much. Dr. Grace Blackwood’s world shatters when she discovers her grandmother’s death wasn’t accidental. The woman who taught her which plants could heal and which could kill was murdered for documenting how a pharmaceutical giant targets Appalachian families with lethal “non-addictive” painkillers. Now they’re coming for Grace. In the archives of the Tester family—descendants of poison-testers who’ve protected their communities for generations—Grace uncovers proof that powerful men have always buried the women who threatened their profits. The evidence leads back five hundred years to Tudor England, where Margaret Tester guards deadly knowledge in Anne Boleyn’s court. Margaret’s herbs can cure a fever or mask a murder, and in a palace where healing is one accusation away from witchcraft, every remedy could be her last. Two women. Five centuries. One truth: Those who profit from poison will always try to silence those who know the antidote. As Grace prepares to testify before Congress, she draws strength from the women who hid recipes in lullabies, passed knowledge mouth-to-mouth, and bled to keep their people safe. Being a Tester isn’t about detecting poison. It’s about remembering who survived it—and why. The Testers burns with quiet rage and hard-won wisdom—a novel of grandmothers and granddaughters bound by memory, medicine, and the dangerous act of remembering what others want erased. For readers of The Once and Future Witches and The Mercies. Some knowledge is too powerful to die. Some women are too stubborn to let it.