On one hand, this is an engaging memoir/work of nonfiction. Threaded throughout the book is an underlying love affair with in Jackson, WY. Since I’ve spent so much time in that area over the past eight years, I reveled in the familiar landscapes and people.

However, this book does something more important, in that it offers a deep and scathing and entirely human critique of the healthcare crisis in the US. Standefer’s life-altering medical condition is traumatic enough. However, the lack of access to the healthcare she so desperately needs adds a new layer of trauma, perhaps even worse than the medical condition itself, which required months of phone calls, arguments, moving to new states, establishing residencies, and various other loopholes that were only moderately effective, but disorienting and life altering.

Even with “good insurance,” I spent nearly a year arguing over about $20k in medical bills, after my first birth. I ended up paying cash for about half of that bill. However, what should be memories of a beautiful first year as a mother are somewhat marred by the horrible healthcare system we have in this country and the hours I wasted on the phone fighting for payment.

Now, several years later, I get shaky and cold every time I have to deal with a health insurance company. Before a procedure, doctors will tell you to check with your insurance. Insurance will (usually) give you correct information, but always with the caveat that it not a guarantee of payment. So, what good is it anyway?

Standefer tells an engaging story, but there is also an important social message conveyed through the story. This is the kind of writing that can create social change, and we need more of it.