Best-seller about journey to heaven is pulled after boy retracts his story

Associated Press

NEW YORK

A best-selling account of a 6-year-old boy’s journey to heaven and back has been pulled after the boy retracted his story.

Spokesman Todd Starowitz of Tyndale House, a leading Christian publisher, confirmed Friday that Alex Malarkey’s “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life Beyond This World” was being withdrawn. Earlier this week, Malarkey acknowledged in an open letter that he was lying, saying that he had been seeking attention. He also regretted that “people had profited from lies.”

“I did not die. I did not go to Heaven,” he wrote. “When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough.”