Book Description
From the author of the phenomenal #1 New York
Times bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, a novel that explores the
unexpected connections of our lives, and the idea that heaven is
more than a place; it's an answer.
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has
lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at
a seaside amusement park.
On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident
kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart.
He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a
destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by
five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been
strangers.
One by one, from
childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their
connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his
"meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the
eternal question: "Why was I here?"
Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The
Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all
told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance
person at Ruby Point Amusement Park.
As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie,
unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his
typical business at the park. Albom then traces Eddie's world
through his tragic final moments, his funeral, and the ensuing
days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life without
him. In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie's
birthdays, telling his life story as a kind of progress report
over candles and cake each year.
And in the third and last thread of the novel,
Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man
sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life (a la A
Christmas Carol).
Each person has been waiting for him in heaven,
and, as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into
Eddie's own in ways he never suspected. Each soul has a story to
tell, a secret to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them
Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival
brings closure to theirs.
Albom takes a big risk with the novel; such a
story can easily veer into the saccharine and preachy, and this
one does in moments. But, for the most part, Albom's telling
remains poignant and is occasionally profound. Even with its
flaws, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a small, pure, and
simple book that will find good company on a shelf next to It's A
Wonderful Life. --Patrick O'Kelley
