A Second Act – by Dr. Matt Morgan

The main content of this book is stories (true ones, but it would do them a disservice to call them anecdotes, and it would be unduly clinical to call them case studies) of people who by a certain definition died—in the sense that their hearts stopped—but timely medical intervention allowed them to “come back to life” and continue living. Each gets a chapter devoted to them.

Others weren’t so lucky; some of the chapters also remember those who didn’t come back. For example: two teenagers struck by the same bolt of lightning; a passerby rushed to give CPR to the one he saw first, only afterwards seeing the other. Fate can be like that.

While the randomness of life and death can be utterly dispassionate, those of us who live on are often not nearly so unfeeling, and this book is about that. Making sense of the senseless, finding meaning, and truly appreciating life in all its heights and depths.

The style is very personal, and most of it comes in the form of retrospective narrative prose, with present-day quotations (the author, an ICU doctor who encounters many such cases, interviewed the survivors for this book, whence the stories) that really drive home the lasting impacts of the experiences (many of the interviews are years, sometimes decades, after the event), and the remarkable diversity of emotional responses on a person-by-person basis.

Bottom line: this book is very engaging from start to finish, and is very thought-provoking. If you’re anything like this reviewer, you might take little crying breaks from time to time, but it’s all very much worth it.

Click here to check out A Second Act, and reflect on what the fragility of life means to you and yours!