The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a book that I read a few years ago. The author is Mitch Albom. It was on the New York Times Bestseller List. I believe it was written in 2003.

I can invision this book as an old Twilight Zone episode, and I am Rod Serling the narrator. The story goes like this: The main character, Eddie is an old war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park changes over the years, so does Eddie, from an optimistic youth to an embittered old man. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.

On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart in the amusement park. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his-and then nothing.

He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers, each of them changed your path forever.

Eddie’s five people individually illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As the story builds to its interesting conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still unknown last act of his life. Was his life a heroic success or a devastating failure ?

I haven’t read many books that have moved me, but I found this one to be interesting. The author gives an astounding original story that will change everything you thought the afterlife would be, and the search for the meaning of life here on earth.