If there is one book that you should read to put things in perspective, it’s this the one! The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom is comforting, enlightening, and profound. It is a love story at the same time as being a spiritual experience. This book is easy to devour in one sitting and could be a resource for anytime you are feeling lost and cannot find purpose.
Eddie is a hardened war veteran who had dreams of leaving his hometown and becoming someone important. His neglectful and abusive father is the head of maintenance at the local seaside amusement park and leads a mundane life, and Eddie is determined not to follow in his footsteps. However, after returning from war, Eddie has a hard time finding purpose and ends up filling in for his father at the amusement park after he becomes too ill to work anymore. As Eddie grows older, he transitions from the optimistic dreamer to a disheartened shell. His days have become dull and routine, which is exactly what he was trying to avoid.
Suddenly, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies at the amusement park that he has given his life to keeping safe. In his last moment alive, he tries to save a little girl by grabbing her little hands. When he arrives in the afterlife, he can’t help but think of the little hands and wonders if he saved her. Heaven doesn’t seem to be the lush Garden of Eden that Eddie was expecting. He is encounters five people whose life he had affected greatly; Some he barely knew, some he knew very well, some he never met, and one that haunts him. All five people who Eddie encounters teach him a lesson and connect their lives to his on a larger-than-life scale. As the story concludes, Eddie finally finds out what happened to those two little hands he grabbed in his last moment alive.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a must have for any family bookcase. The characters in the story are all a little flawed as people, but easy to love and become attached to quickly in the story. The story not only shows how even a mundane and seemingly dull life can profoundly affect the lives of other people, making everyone useful to someone and showing that all life has purpose.