Artwork by
Dennis Murphy

For the students, by the students

The Five People You Meet In Heaven
Elizabeth Schilling, CAFNR Corner Post Staff

Nov. 17, 2003-It's been dreary today. Rain, wind, lightning, tornado warnings, it is just plain gloomy outside. A "Winnie the Pooh" type of day. The type of day that might make you feel reflective. The type of day you want to curl up with a good book and ponder the meaning of life. The book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom, is a good book for this type of day. The book is small- approximately a 3 by 5 inch book that contains 196 pages. It can be easily read in a few hours and is an easy read as well. Albom is also the author of the New York Times best-seller Tuesdays with Morrie.

According to Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club and Bonesetter's Daughter, "This is the fable you will devour when you fall in love. This is the tale you will keep by your side when you are lost. This is the story you will turn to again and again, because it possesses the rare magic to let you see yourself and the world anew. This is a gift to the soul."

James McBride, author of The Color of Water and Miracle of St. Anna, writes: "The Five People You Meet in Heaven is deep, profound, superbly imaginative, written with the quiet eloquence of a storyteller who dares to leap into the most magical of places. This poetic book is full of lessons and hope."

Albom uses everyday language to tell us the story of Eddie and his life. Eddie is a maintenance man that works at an amusement park named Ruby Pier by the ocean. It is not a glamorous life and certainly not the life he imagined for himself. However, he fell into the job because it was where his father had worked.

The story begins with Eddie's death and the last hour of his life. Albom accomplishes this literary task of telling Eddie's life story through Eddie's death. At his death, Eddie meets five deceased people whose lives he touched, some of the people Eddie knew and some he never met. Each of these five people reveal to Eddie how each event in his life was connected to other events and touched lives of other people even though he could not see those connections when he was alive.

The reader is taken through Eddie's life, his time in the war, his marriage, his wife's death, his father's death, his joys and his regrets. The story is told in a simple and magical manner that touches the heart and speaks to the soul. It is engaging and enlightening. By taking the reader through Eddie's life and death, Albom reminds his readers that, "the life of each person affects the other and the others affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."

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