Lightning Flowers

My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life

By: Katherine E. Standefer

Narrated by: Katherine E. Standefer

This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises).

What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator.

In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots.

From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated.

Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.

Critic reviews

“Lightning Flowers is both a memoir and a mystery, a riveting debut book by Katherine Standefer. She faces her own heart and the technological device that keeps it beating with the sharp eye of a journalist and the dramatic pacing of a novelist. Following the supply chain from her body to conflict minerals in the Congo, we see how the world is interconnected and interrelated. Standefer is a lyrical writer who has crafted an embodied text, understanding that our survival balances on the cliff edge of our complicity and our compassion.”—Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion — Essays of Undoing

“In Lightning Flowers, Katherine E. Standefer offers a full accounting of the cost of a single life, and it is nothing short of astonishing. She travels, literally, to both the brink of death and the edge of the world to discover exactly what it means to live. Her courage is palpable, on the page and in life. This book is utterly spectacular.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and What We’ve Lost is Nothing

“Lightning Flowers is a quest for an answer to the most basic human question: what is a life worth? For a young American woman, kept alive by a hunk of metal in her chest, the answer is to be found in the African mines that produce titanium, cobalt, nickel... the precious metals used to make our essential microelectronics, including heart defibrillators. No trial in this quest can be avoided: heartbreak and debt, culture shock and corporate empire, medical indifference and poverty, trauma and mortality. There is an alchemy of tender magic and brute force in Standefer's writing; Lightning Flowers transports us into the heart of Africa—and the heart of a woman forced to question our global, racialized economy even as she identifies the raw materials that give her life.”—Ann Neumann, author of The Good Death

“In her stunning debut, Katherine E. Standefer reveals how a single piece of supposedly lifesaving machinery has forever implicated her in ruinous global supply chains, how entire economies of extraction have come to reside deep within her body. With great clarity and resilience, Lightning Flowers invites us to become intimate with the moral and environmental calculus of our own lives.”—Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River

"An affecting, crystalline memoir."—O, the Oprah Magazine

Eye opening and heart wrenching

As a healthcare professional with a brother who is an electrophysiologist, I was intrigued to hear Katherine Standefer’s story as a glimpse into what my brother did for a living; What I got was so much more! As a physician myself, I am always in awe of what life is like “on the other side” for a patient and the impact things like the style in which physicians communicate make a difference in a patient’s life. So many times, my jaw dropped at how the author was left feeling after a physician did not make her feel like she was heard and how our medical system continues to fail patients in this way everyday. I was grateful that she brought to light the struggles getting healthcare is when one is not insured despite every effort to get insurance. There are so many parts to this story that brought me to tears and made me angry over our broken healthcare system that leaves pharmaceutical companies and hospital CEOs making millions and leaving patients and physicians struggling to be at the center of the story and the ability to be the best. In this book, I was able to hear her story loud and clear. We need to do better.

recommended for all interested in healthcare

This beautifully written memoir should be required reading for those interested in healthcare. While the author goes into detail into what is involved in the making of her medical device, the parts about the patient/physician/payor relationship was what moved me the most.

startlingly beautiful and raw

The author delivers her story with a raw, sweet tenderness. Part memoir, part medical exposé, part ecological and anthropological journey. Ms Standefer's performance is strong and intimate, immediate. A story and viewpoint that will stay with me a very long time.

Must read true medical journey

Thank you having the courage to tell your story. An incredible indictment of the medical, insurance and mining industry wrapped up in the the authors own harrowing story. You owe it to yourself to read this compelling book. Best wishes to the author in life and with her health issues.

A far reaching expose of medicine and technology

Exposes the challenges and failures of our medical system and the effects of mining to supply metals for today's life saving medical technologies. She helps you feel the frustration of how politics can affect access to insurance for many. She teaches you to mourn the loss of parts of our planet and to understand the failure of reserving parts of the rain forests to make up for mining companies destruction. You empathize with the peoples who no longer are allowed to access the forest and see their cultures and lifestyles destroyed by mining. The book ends in limbo along with our medical system, politics and our planet.