Albom returns to heaven for first sequel

By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER

Associated Press

DETROIT

Mitch Albom’s books are about faith and salvation, forgiveness and second chances.

What they most certainly are not about, according to the author, is a certain five-letter word.

“I really don’t think my books are about death,” Albom told The Associated Press. “And I don’t think they’re depressing. I think they’re the opposite.”

Many of Albom’s works do touch on the afterlife, however, including his latest, “The Next Person You Meet in Heaven,” which was released Tuesday and marks the novelist’s first sequel. The new book revisits the stories of Eddie the amusement park maintenance man and Annie, the young girl whose life he saves while losing his own. Eddie and Annie appeared in 2003’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”

That first foray into fiction followed the mega-successful “Tuesdays with Morrie,” which chronicled the Detroit sports columnist’s weekly meetings with his dying mentor and transformed Albom from an award-winning Detroit sports columnist into a best-selling author.

“I think all my books at some point you can kind of draw a line somewhere with a slide rule to ‘Tuesdays with Morrie,”’ Albom said. “You know, there’s some lesson that happened, and that’s OK. That was a seminal moment in my life.”

Another was his relationship with Chika, a Haitian girl with a terminal brain tumor whom Albom met through the orphanage in Port-au-Prince that he set up after the earthquake in 2010. Albom brought Chika to live with him and his wife in Michigan, and, although she was given five months to live, the girl Albom described as a “fighter” lasted nearly two years before succumbing to her illness.

“The Next Person You Meet in Heaven” is dedicated to Chika, and Albom acknowledges that a passage in which Annie suffers a tragedy involving a small child represents “a little bit of projection, I guess, on my part.”

“(Chika) permeated the air around that book,” Albom said during an interview at the S.A.Y. Detroit Play Center, a facility where young people can come and learn, eat and/or play music and sports after school. It’s one of Albom’s many charitable endeavors in his hometown and beyond.