An intimate and gripping memoir that examines the interconnectedness of life and death -- combining the searing honesty of Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work and the lyricism of Eula Biss's On Immunity. As a teenager, Harriet Alida Lye was diagnosed with two strains of leukemia that had never before been seen in combination. After the doctors discovered the second, rarer, and more fatal strain, her father wrote, "It's all rather complicated, but the end result is that Harriet's condition is still treatable, a full cure is still the plan" in what became the family journal, and the "official record" of her illness. Fifteen years after Harriet's diagnosis with a life-threatening cancer, she started writing. Shortly after, she became pregnant for the first time, despite having been told that her chemotherapy treatment protocol would likely make natural conception impossible. After becoming pregnant, Harriet knew her body had the ability to create death: to be a mother is to make a death, as death is bound up in life. But she also wondered what she would do with the power to create a life. Weaving in source material from the year she was in the hospital, written by both of her parents as well as her teenage self, Natural Killer is told in narrative, snapshots, journal entries from her mother and father, and blog updates posted for friends and family. Raw, lyrical, and profoundly moving, Natural Killer explores what it's like to live with illness, to survive it; what it means for your body to turn against itself, self-destructing from within; and how to reconcile that knowledge with the reality of creating a life.