A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning

by Gretel Ehrlich

Overview

A powerful chronicle of a wounded woman’s exploration of nature and self

After nature writer Gretel Ehrlich was struck by lightning near her Wyoming ranch and almost died, she embarked on a painstaking and visionary journey back to the land of the living. With the help of an extraordinary cardiologist and the companionship of her beloved dog Sam, she avidly explores the natural and spiritual world to make sense of what happened to her. We follow as she combs every inch of her new home on the California coast, attends a convention of lightning-strike victims, and goes on a seal watch in Alaska. Ehrlich then turns her focus inward, exploring the tiny but equally fascinating ecosystem of the human heart, and culminated in a stunningly beautiful description of open-heart surgery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440621086
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/01/1995
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	361 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gretel Ehrlich is a poet and writer whose work includes This Cold Heaven; The Solace of Open Spaces; Islands, the Universe; the novel, Heart Mountain; and the memoir A Match to the Heart. She is the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award and the Henry David Thoreau Prize.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A dazzling work of art.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“This eclectic chronicle of recovery offers excursions into neurobiology, cardiology, the lore and science of lightning, and the medical literature of lightning injury. . . . Evocative writing and lots of fascinating facts.”—The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

In 1991 the author of this lyrical narrative of resurrection was struck by lightning near her Wyoming ranch. The effects of this electrocution were long-lasting, requiring intensive medical attention for the physical and mental trauma that included sensory impairment. In her chronicle of two years of healing, naturalist Ehrlich ( The Solace of Open Spaces ) traces the abrupt changing of her life from ``before the negative charge shot down from cloud to ground.'' Her love for animals and the earth was a support, as was the care of an intuitive cardiologist and the friends and family who rallied around as her failing marriage finally ended. Ehrlich's inspirational self-discovery calls attention to other lightning survivors as, ``carved from a ruined body,'' she returns to the ranch with new life. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Acclaimed for The Solace of Open Spaces ( LJ 11/1/85), Ehrlich here reveals that scary things can happen in open spaces, too. She recounts being struck and momentarily killed.

Library Journal

Fans of Ehrlich's intensely observant, philosophical, and spiritual books, including "The Solace of Open Spaces" (1985) and "Islands, the Universe, and Home" (1991), would have been eager to read any new work, even if she didn't have a story as astonishing and unexpected as this: Ehrlich was struck by lightning while walking in her beloved Wyoming. She was hurled through the air and seriously injured. Her brain, heart, and nervous system were so damaged it took her more than a year to recover, and she'll never be the same. And yet, as a writer, she is. Somehow Ehrlich was able to apply her profound curiosity, gift for synthesis, and quiet but forceful eloquence to this terrifying experience and create an unforgettable treatise on the little-understood effects of being jolted by millions of volts of electricity. Thunder and lightning are the stuff of myth and the tools of the gods, yet they are also as ordinary and as incredible as the seasons or the intricate, wonderful processes of our body. As Ehrlich struggles to regain her strength, she muses on how self-involving illness is, how subtle the interaction between patient and healer, and how incomprehensible the workings of the brain are to itself. She discovers, in fact, that there is no such thing as the mind-body split, just as there's no such thing as being immune to the forces of nature.

Donna Seaman

A dazzling work of art.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“This eclectic chronicle of recovery offers excursions into neurobiology, cardiology, the lore and science of lightning, and the medical literature of lightning injury. . . . Evocative writing and lots of fascinating facts.”—The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher