Most of you won’t know the name Henrietta Lacks, and a few weeks after reading this review most of you will have forgotten her name.

Until a few months ago, I wouldn’t have known her name either, which is messed up because she has affected the lives of billions and saved just as many.

This year’s EIU Reads book is the “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and I had to read it for Debut. And I kind of liked it.

Normally, I enjoy steamy romance novels that toe the line of inappropriateness and shamelessness, gruesome horror and sugary-sweet young adult books.

I am surprised to be talking about “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” a non-fiction book that delves into the sordid past of science and American race relations.

The balance between personal relationships and science in the book is a saving grace for people that don’t understand science but love human interest pieces, and visa versa.

The cells taken from Lacks’ tumor did something that doctors had never seen before: they could be kept alive and grow for days after they were removed from their host.

But the catch was that Henrietta’s cells were taken against the wishes of her family, and decades later her family would discover how cells from the thing that killed her was still alive.

In this book, I was torn.

Henrietta was a middle-aged, black women living in the heavily segregated city of Baltimore, Maryland and working with the equally racist staff of John Hopkins Hospital.

But, this book doesn’t focus on racism, the life of Henrietta or science.

It alternates between all three while also detailing the life of Henrietta’s daughter Deborah.

From incestuous rape to a lack of education, Deborah has not had an easy go.

Forget about the title because ironically the book is not a biography of Henrietta Lacks—born Loretta Pleasant—but mostly about her death and the benefits all of us received from her cells.

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is not a book that I would have normally gone to M.J. Booth to check out for a leisurely read.

“Immortal” led me to be self-reflective while asking myself “does the end justify the means?”

Is the loss of one human life OK, if it leads to millions longer? Are your cells yours once they’ve left your body?

Can you put a monetary value on someone’s cell when they were taken unwillingly? Can you patent DNA?

I have to say that I am still torn.

3 out of 4 stars