This guide will help inform readers of this year's   Common Read:    Lightning Flowers: my journey to uncover the cost of saving a life by Katherine E. Standefer ’07.     Standefer earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona.      At Colorado College, she double majored in sociology and English-fiction Writing.

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, Standefer tells the story of her troubled relationship to her own ICD, from her harrowing experience in the American healthcare system to her global journey to the mines and factories where the minerals in her device may have originated. Deeply personal and sharply reported, "Lightning Flowers" takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to death, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.

The purpose of the Common Read Program at Colorado College is to create a common intellectual experience for incoming undergraduate students, to introduce them to our core values as an academic community, and to teach them how to engage as members of our community of scholars.

Common Read at CC 2021-22

View the Reading Guide with links to Interviews With & Articles By Darnell L. Moore and Book Reviews