Part melodrama and part parable‎,‎ Mitch Albom‎'‎s The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories‎,‎ all told about the same man‎:‎ 83‎-year‎-old Eddie‎,‎ the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park‎.‎ As the novel opens‎,‎ readers are told that Eddie‎,‎ unsuspecting‎,‎ is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park‎.‎ Albom then traces Eddie‎'‎s world through his tragic final moments‎,‎ his funeral‎,‎ and the ensuing days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life without him‎.‎ In alternating sections‎,‎ Albom flashes back to Eddie‎'‎s birthdays‎,‎ telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each year‎.‎ And in the third and last thread of the novel‎,‎ Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life ‎(‎a la A Christmas Carol‎)‎‎.‎ Each person has been waiting for him in heaven‎,‎ and‎,‎ as Albom reveals‎,‎ each life ‎(‎and death‎)‎ was woven into Eddie‎'‎s own in ways he never suspected‎.‎ Each soul has a story to tell‎,‎ a secret to reveal‎,‎ and a lesson to share‎.‎ Through them Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs‎.‎