The Five People you Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

I love this book!  Not many people know about it or at least not many people I know.  I first read the book when I was in college & it attracted me because of the name.  I have always wondered where you go after death & how that works.  Is it like it is here?  Is it a whole different world?  I got to thinking of that because of something my sister said to me after my brother in law died.  She said when he was alive they made a pact that whoever died first would have to come back & tell the other what it was like.  Well, she dreamt of him & in the dream he told her the afterlife was nothing like anyone would have imagined.  That has stuck with me for years now...7 to be precise.

Perhaps it's coincidence, perhaps it was her imagination going wild but the truth is, none of us truly knows.  So, we have to believe that there is an afterlife & that one of us will come back to tell the rest of us still alive.  At least, I hope so.

Enough about me though, here's a short summary of the book:

An older man by the name of Eddie dies after an amusement park ride fails.  After dying he enters into the afterlife & realizes that his life will now be explained by 5 people he met during his lifetime.  These 5 people are not necessarily family or friends but just people that somehow changed his life even if he didn't know it at the time.

He re-lives 5 stages of his life where he met each of the 5 people & each of them tell him how they saved his life or changed his life but cost them theirs.  At the end, Eddie is taken back to where he died to see the difference he made in other people's lives & see that the world carries on.  He ends up choosing his own heaven and remains there forever!

For the full summary go to Wikipedia or to visit Mitch Albom to see other books by the author!  I want to read them all but I'm afraid I'll start crying...see what inspired him to write them.