The Five People You Meet In Heaven--Mitch Albom (Andrew)

This is the story of Eddie, the head maintenance man at an amusement park named Ruby Pier.

In a lead-in to the story, a bunch of boys went to the park several months earlier, and one lost his car key. As you go through the first chapter, you see that the key lodged into the working part of a ride and began fraying away at the cables. This is a literary device called "foreshadowing" because it hints at what is to come and prepares us for the rest of the story. The "afterward" of the book will bring things full circle, as we see that young man again.

On Eddie's 83rd birthday, we watch a countdown of what he does in the last couple of hours of his life. Then, at just the right moment, there is a broken cable on the ride and Eddie tries to save a little girl who somehow got under the ride and is about to get killed as the car falls to earth. Eddie gets killed, never knowing whether or not he saved the little girl...the last thing he remembered was tiny hands grabbing his and pulling at him.

When Eddie regains a sense of consciousness, he finds himself at Ruby Pier, but not as it was just minutes ago, but as it was when he was a very young boy. The first person he meets is "The Blue Man" a member of the freak show when Eddie was just a boy. He learns that he had accidentally caused the Blue Man's death. The Blue Man introduced Eddie to heaven and told him how everyone touches the lives of everyone else, if they know them or not. He also explained to Eddie that he would be meeting 5 people from his life in heaven, and each of them had something to teach him. When Eddie asked why heaven would be Ruby Pier (a place he had spent his life hating and wanting to be away from) the Blue Man told Eddie that this was not Eddie's heaven, it was the Blue Man's heaven, because that was the place that had been most special to him in his life.

The second person Eddie meets is the captain of his army platoon from WWII, in the Philippines. Eddie finds himself back in the place that was his worst nightmare...a place he had spent over 60 years trying to forget but couldn't because of the injury he received there. His reliving the memories of that time again was a foreshadow of what happens later on in the book.

While this meeting is not the climax of the story, the story of his time and experiences in this place are pivotal to the story. From this point on in the memories of Eddie's life, everything is colored by what happened here, including Eddie's death.

The third person Eddie meets in heaven is Ruby, the lady Ruby Pier was named for. He also sees his father, but cannot communicate with him, because his father is part of Ruby's heaven, not Eddie's. Ruby not only gives Eddie a history of Ruby Pier, but also showed Eddie things about his parents that he never knew. For the first time in his life, he began to understand his father. She showed him some of the reasons for the emotions (or lack of) that caused his father to first neglect, then abuse and finally cut off all communication with Eddie. In helping him see those things, she helps Eddie begin to move beyond the hatred and hurt that ate away at him, especially since his father had died and there was no more time to make up.

The fourth person he meets is his wife Marguerite in her heaven...a heaven filled with weddings and joy. He relived the years of their marriage...in her heaven, she met him in the midst of a wedding, and she was handing him candy-covered almonds..."for the bitter and the sweet..." Her death at a young age had left him just a shell of a person, and meeting her here in heaven gave him new life and re-sparked his undying love for her. It was a reminder to him of how he had loved her, taken her for granted, hurt her and ultimately lost her.

Oh! I've wanted to read this book just never got the time. Now i can get a better idea of what the book is really about yay. :)