40 Fun Facts About The Five People You Meet in Heaven

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Eddie dies on his 83rd birthday trying to save a little girl from what?

A falling cart from a ride called Freddy's Free Fall crushes Eddie as he dives to push the girl clear. He reaches heaven not knowing whether he saved her.

Mitch Albom wrote The Five People You Meet in Heaven after which bestselling memoir about his dying professor?

Tuesdays with Morrie made Albom famous in 1997, and he took six years to follow it with this, his first novel. He said the huge reception for the memoir had overwhelmed him.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, what does the Captain confess he did to Eddie during their wartime escape?

Shot him in the leg is the confession: the Captain did it to stop Eddie running into a burning hut, which saved his life but left him with a lifelong limp.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, what did young Eddie chase into the road ahead of the Blue Man's car?

A baseball, a seventh-birthday present, sent Eddie into the road. The Blue Man swerved to miss him, and the fright brought on the heart attack that killed him.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, what is the name of Eddie's wife, the fourth person he meets?

Marguerite teaches Eddie that love is not ended by death, only changed in form. He had lived without her for more than thirty years.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the heaven of Eddie's wife is filled with which celebrations from many cultures?

Weddings fill her heaven because to her they stand for love and possibility. Eddie finds her there as a young bridesmaid at an Italian country wedding.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the fifth person tells Eddie his years at Ruby Pier served which purpose?

Keeping children safe on the rides was Eddie's atonement, she says, for the child who died in the hut he burned. Hearing it lifts a lifetime of feeling worthless.

Mitch Albom modeled Eddie in The Five People You Meet in Heaven on which relative, a man who felt unimportant?

His uncle Eddie, to whom the book is dedicated, was the model. Albom wrote it wishing the real Eddie could learn in heaven that he had mattered on earth.

Which Oscar-winning actor played the elderly Eddie in the television film of The Five People You Meet in Heaven?

Jon Voight played Eddie in a production that drew 18.7 million viewers, making it the most-watched television movie of its year.

Mitch Albom opens The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which starts with Eddie's death, with a chapter titled what?

The End is the opening chapter's title, and the narrator spends it counting down the last hour of Eddie's life. Albom's point is that a finish can also be a start.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, what job does Eddie hold at Ruby Pier, as his father did before him?

Maintenance man is the job, and the patch on his work shirt leads the park's kids to call him Eddie Maintenance. He had sworn he would never end up at the pier.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, a young Eddie leaves his sweetheart at Ruby Pier to fight in which war?

World War II takes Eddie away just after he falls in love; he enlists to prove his bravery. The darkness he brings home shadows the rest of his life.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, in which country are Eddie and the Captain held as prisoners of war?

The Philippines is where the unit is captured and put to forced labor. Their escape ends with the men burning the camp, the act that haunts Eddie for life.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which lesson does Ruby, the namesake of Ruby Pier, teach as Eddie's third person?

Forgiveness is Ruby's lesson: she shows Eddie how his father really died and urges him to let his anger go. He finally makes peace with the old man.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which lesson does the Captain, Eddie's second person, teach him on a battlefield?

Sacrifice is the Captain's lesson: giving something up, he argues, is a thing to aspire to, not to mourn. He himself died getting his men out.

Before The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom was best known in Detroit as what kind of journalist?

Sports columnist was Albom's trade at the Detroit Free Press, where he won national awards. He has said years among star athletes made him want to write about ordinary people.

Mitch Albom's sequel to The Five People You Meet in Heaven follows the little girl Eddie saved; what is her name?

Annie is the heroine of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven, which reveals that the accident cost her a hand that surgeons had to reattach. Eddie becomes one of her five people.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which lesson does the Blue Man, a stranger to Eddie, teach him first?

No act is random, the Blue Man teaches: all lives are linked, even those of strangers. Asked what good came of his own death, he answers simply that Eddie lived.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which chemical, taken as boyhood medicine, turned the Blue Man's skin blue?

Silver nitrate, bought from a chemist to calm his nerves, colored his skin for life because he kept taking more than the dose. Sacked from a factory, he joined a sideshow.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which skill learned at Ruby Pier does Eddie use to distract his prison guards?

Juggling holds the guards' attention long enough for the prisoners to overpower them. A boardwalk trick Eddie thought trivial ends up freeing his whole unit.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, how does the Captain die on the night he and Eddie escape captivity?

A land mine kills the Captain as he goes ahead of the truck to clear the way; had the truck rolled over it, every man aboard would have died. Eddie, unconscious, never knew.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which illness kills Eddie's wife at forty-seven, years after her car accident?

A brain tumor takes her after the accident's hospital bills had already ended the couple's hopes of adopting. Eddie spends his remaining birthdays alone.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Eddie's wife is badly hurt while driving to find him at which place?

A racetrack is where Eddie spends his thirty-ninth birthday gambling with his friend Noel. She sets out to apologize for scolding him and never arrives.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, what is the name of the little girl by the river, Eddie's fifth person?

Tala died as a small girl in the hut Eddie set alight during the war, the shadow he tried and failed to reach. In heaven she shows no anger toward him at all.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which illness kills Eddie's father after a cold, drunken night on the beach?

Pneumonia sets in after he lies soaked on the sand for hours, having dragged a drowning friend out of the surf. Eddie, knowing none of this, resents him for decades.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, outside what kind of building does Eddie meet Ruby and see his father?

A diner stands at the heart of Ruby's heaven because she waited tables in one as a young woman, when life felt safe and simple. A wealthy admirer, Emile, later built the pier in her name.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which young co-worker takes over Eddie's job at Ruby Pier after his death?

Dominguez inherits the post, having been handed forty dollars by Eddie that same day toward a trip to Mexico. He later packs the old man's things into a trunk in the shop.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Eddie and his wife are married in what kind of rented restaurant?

Chinese it was: a modest ceremony at Sammy Hong's with folding chairs and an accordion player. Eddie kept the menu in a box for the rest of his life.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, where is Eddie's wife waiting for him once his five lessons are done?

On a Ferris wheel, wearing a yellow dress, she sits at the top and beckons him with open arms. It is the final image of his journey through heaven.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, what does the girl at the river hand Eddie to wash her burns away?

A stone is what the river kids use to wash one another, copying their mothers. As Eddie scrubs, her burns fall away, and with them the guilt he had carried since the war.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which lost object slowly cuts the ride cable and causes Eddie's fatal accident?

A car key, dropped by a teenager months earlier, wedges against the cable and wears it through. The epilogue reveals that the boy was a descendant of Ruby herself.

In its starred review, Publishers Weekly likened The Five People You Meet in Heaven to which Charles Dickens tale?

A Christmas Carol was the comparison, as another slim tale that reminds readers what really matters on earth. The New York Times was far cooler, finding the story manipulative.

Which actor played the Blue Man in Lloyd Kramer's television film of The Five People You Meet in Heaven?

Jeff Daniels played the Blue Man, the sideshow performer who is the first of Eddie's five people. The film was made in Vancouver, British Columbia.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which ability has Eddie lost when he first meets the Blue Man?

Speech deserts Eddie at first, and the Blue Man says the silence is there to help him listen. What he gains instead is a body free of pain and of his cane.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Ruby reveals that Eddie's father fell ill after saving which friend from the sea?

Mickey Shea, drunk and newly out of work, had just assaulted Eddie's mother, yet Eddie's father still pulled him from the waves. Ruby tells the story to show loyalty outlasting rage.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, at which Ruby Pier spot did Eddie first dance with his future wife?

The Stardust Band Shell is where the two first danced, and where Eddie finally settles in heaven. He waits there for the little girl he saved to live out her life.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the Blue Man, born Joseph Corvelzchik, emigrated as a child from which country?

Poland was his birthplace, and his first memory is of his mother lifting him over the ocean on the crossing. By ten he was sewing buttons in a sweatshop.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, what was Eddie saving money to study before he enlisted in the army?

Engineering school was the plan that would carry Eddie away from the pier. He never went after the war, a failure that still nags at him at eighty-three.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which job does Eddie take after the war, before returning to Ruby Pier?

Taxi driver is the job Eddie finds after months of brooding at home, pushed out by a drunken row with his father. He keeps driving by day even after he starts at the pier.

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, inside what old Ruby Pier attraction does Eddie wake up in the afterlife?

A giant teacup from a long-gone ride is where Eddie comes to, limbs dangling over the rim. He is back in the pier of his boyhood, which is the Blue Man's heaven, not his.