A review by foggy_rosamund
A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck by Lightning by Gretel Ehrlich

3.0

When walking on her ranch in Wyoming, Gretel Ehrlich was struck by lightning. Although Wyoming sees more lightning striking humans than any other part of the US, hospitals were ill-equipped to help Ehrlich, and her serious heart problems were dismissed. With her parents' help, she travelled to California, where she was treated by an enthusiastic and dynamic heart specialist, who took the electrical damage to her heart seriously. Her heart could no longer regulate the rate at which it was beating, and would get slower and slower, especially if she tried to move. With medication, she was gradually able to get her heart beating regularly again: her two-year recovery is chronicled in this memoir, in which she explores how the heart works, what we understand about how electrical impulses work within the body, and how hard it is to stay still and recover. She meets lightning strike victims, and slowly comes back to herself with the help of her dog, Sam. I enjoy Ehrlich's writing, especially about place and animals, and her no-nonsense writing style gets across her extreme physical experiences directly and with immediacy. Her writing on the heart is clear and easy to read.

I enjoyed this, and thought it was a well-structured and coherent book, but as someone who is disabled and chronically ill, Ehrlich's strength and vibrancy could sometimes be disheartening. Though she nearly dies, her recovery seems, to me, very swift and straightforward, and though she talks about learning to stay still and cope with weakness, she is actually very dynamic and energetic: less than a year after her injury, she is camping on a cliffside in Alaska, surveying seals. These experiences are far out of the reach of most of us!