If you are thinking about what comes after this short trip on earth then you might entertain the thought that we meet a certain number of figures after our death. They teach us something that we did not know when we were alive and according to the book while we are alive we are connected to perfect strangers. They all affect us differently. This is another way of saying that our lives are all interconnected whether you know a person personally or not and that we could have learned something from them while we were alive if we had that opportunity or were conscious of our blessings.
His style of the book is itself entertaining, making the reading enjoyable; an older man's final moments are seen externally as he spends his last moments at a fair site. Instead of going through the classical death scene, Eddie is struck suddenly and wakes into another world. With a light conscience, he is aware that his surroundings have changed and he is projected back in time, as he is about to meet the first of five heavenly characters. Each one will remind him of something in his past, either metaphorically or not and a small inconsequential happening takes on a new perspective; the man lived to an old age but there were people who gave their lives so that he could get older. One lived before he was born but still set influenced his life before he worked at the fair site where he lost his life. This is a reminder of how he was connected to people little more than strangers whose time was up when Eddie was a child or growing up. If Eddie thought that he was disadvantaged, here were people much less fortunate, including show people of the circus who felt unloved.
This is excellent reading for those who like to reflect on life itself. Many will still take life for granted given the opportunities we have in industrialized countries while others are much less fortunate and are analogous to the "freaks" or the tragic souls that came alive through Eddie's meetings in heaven.
