THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS is an extraordinary detective story in which Rebecca Skloot takes us from scientific laboratories to the tobacco fields of southern Virginia. She tells the story of the unique and miraculous HeLa cells and of the woman from whom they were taken: Henrietta Lacks. HeLa cells became the first immortal human cell line ever grown in culture and one of the most important tools in medicine. The story of the cells leads inevitably to Henrietta's family and the head-on collision between their lives and the imperatives of modern science.