On July 11, 2019, Vincent Lambert passed away at the Hospital of Reims. It was the final act in an 11-year family, medical, legal, political and media saga that took numerous improbable twists and turns, and continued right up until the eve of his death. The story began with a relatively commonplace automobile accident in 2008, which left the 32-year-old nurse in a persistent vegetative state. Lambert vs. Lambert follows the protracted legal battle between the man’s wife and other members of his family, who used the courts to block any medically-assisted end-of-life resolution. Tremendously well-known in France, the case drew extensive media coverage in a Catholic country where euthanasia remains an extremely sensitive issue. How did the debate over one man’s life upend an entire society’s relationship to the question of life and death?