The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

The Next Person You Meet in Heaven is a novel written by Mitch Albom and originally published in 2018. The book won the Wilbur Award in 2019. Mitch Albom has written several novels on the subject of the afterlife, and this novel delves into aspects of magical realism and spirituality as Annie learns in death the lessons she could not whilst alive. All the events of her life that she viewed as mistakes had a purpose, and she comes to view Death as Part of the Life Cycle.

This guide utilizes the 2018 HarperCollins first edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The Next Person You Meet in Heaven contains depictions of child abuse and graphic violence that this guide references.

Plot Summary

The Next Person You Meet in Heaven is written from the perspective of a third-person narrator and begins with the hours before protagonist Annie’s death. It is her wedding day, and she is marrying her childhood sweetheart, Paulo. Annie cannot help thinking that something is going to go wrong. At the wedding, she catches a glimpse of an old man she doesn’t recognize. The man is actually Eddie, the protagonist of The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Eddie died saving Annie from a falling ride cart at Ruby Pier when she was eight years old, while Annie’s hand was cut off in the accident and surgically reattached. When Paulo gifts Annie a pipe cleaner rabbit, just as Eddie did the day of the accident, Annie gets a strange feeling.

After the wedding, Paulo and Annie stop to help a man named Tolbert who is stranded on the freeway. He gives them a card for his hot air balloon business, and Annie decides they should go the next day. Tolbert is absent, and his assistant’s inexperience leads to the balloon crashing into some wires. Paulo, Annie, and the assistant all manage to escape, but Annie falls unconscious and wakes in the hospital. Paulo is critically injured and requires a lung transplant. Annie offers hers; during surgery, Annie falls into a coma and momentarily dies.

The narrative flips between the present, as Annie experiences death, and the past, as Annie relives her childhood memories. In the afterlife, Annie sees a train, controlled by a small boy. He introduces himself as Sameer and explains that he is the first of five people Annie will meet in heaven. Sameer was gravely injured when he attempted to hang off the back of a train and lost his arm. The surgery he underwent inspired Sameer to become a surgeon himself. Sameer is the man who treated Annie after her accident, and Annie enters her childhood body to experience the moment once more. Sameer uses a novel surgery method on Annie, which ends up saving many more lives in the future. Sameer explains that his and Annie’s accidents served a purpose in the long chain of human connection. When Annie asks about Paulo, Sameer cannot answer.

The scene changes. Annie, lacking a body, begins to crawl through a seemingly endless desert. She comes across the parts of her body, but a pack of dogs appears and starts to tear at them. She wills herself to chase them, and they soon arrive at a series of lawns and doors. An elderly woman appears, telling Annie the story of how she lost her dog. She shows Annie memories of the months after the Ruby Pier accident, when Lorraine, Annie’s mother, moved them to Arizona.

Lorraine isolates them both and grows increasingly distant and cold. One day, though, Lorraine takes Annie to adopt a dog. Annie chooses one who is wounded, identifying with its plight, and finds out the dog’s name is Cleo. Annie remembers a time when she left Cleo unattended, briefly losing her. Fortunately, she found Cleo at home, waiting for her to return.

The elderly woman reveals that she is Cleo in human form. Cleo tells Annie that it was because of their shared wounds, as well as Annie’s empathy and loneliness, that the two of them found each other and shared many great years. Cleo transforms back into her dog form, and Annie holds her. She is filled with euphoria before she is swept back into a lonely desert. Back on Earth, Tolbert cannot find his assistant, and heads to the balloon field in a rage.

Annie sees her mother’s face emerge above her, as big as the sky itself. Lorraine shows Annie the formative experiences of her own life, including her fast relationship with Annie’s father, Jerry. Lorraine puts up with Jerry’s abuse until Jerry hits Annie, which prompts her to file for divorce. Later, Jerry tries to capitalize on Annie’s accident, forcing Lorraine to take Annie to Arizona and begin a new life. She does not tell Annie about Eddie’s death at Ruby Pier. Annie finds out at school, but Lorraine refuses to explain even when Annie confronts her. When Annie graduates, she leaves Lorraine behind, moving in with her boyfriend, Walt. Annie and Lorraine reunite by chance, and Annie learns that Lorraine has cancer. Annie comes back into her mother’s life, aiding her through her final months. In the afterlife, Annie and Lorraine watch Lorraine’s funeral and talk; Lorraine then decides to tell Annie about the day of the accident.

The scene changes to a younger Lorraine on the beach at Ruby Pier with a boyfriend. She allows herself to be given attention, leaving Annie alone. Eventually, Lorraine realizes she is repeating old mistakes and leaves to find Annie, only to discover that Annie was in a serious accident. In the afterlife, Lorraine confesses that this was her darkest moment. In the years following, Lorraine felt desperate to protect Annie at all costs.

Annie flashes back to third grade. She is bullied for her injury by everyone but a boy named Paulo. At age 12, Paulo offers to start walking Annie home from school. Lorraine declines, which leaves Annie feeling isolated and infantilized. When Paulo and Annie are 14, Paulo moves away to Italy. Before he leaves, Annie draws a portrait of him and kisses him, but doesn’t see him again for years.

After Lorraine’s death, Annie becomes pregnant and marries Walt. The baby is premature and dies, and Annie enters a long period of shock and grief. After sharing this long-held secret, Annie forgives her mother, then moves on to meet her next person. On Earth, Tolbert discovers the balloon crash and heads to the hospital to find his assistant.

Annie finds herself at Ruby Pier. She meets Eddie, the man who died saving her. Eddie introduces himself and empathizes with Annie’s feelings of failure. He assures her that his experience in meeting five people in heaven changed his outlook. He shows her a burning village in the Philippines and explains that it was his revenge after he escaped capture as a prisoner. He introduces Annie to Tala, a girl who burned alive inside one of the huts. Eddie explains that he didn’t know about Tala until after he died, and that she told him that his life had purpose because he went on to save Annie. Eddie shows Annie the scene of the accident, and Annie watches as he saves her and is crushed moments later. Eddie then produces Annie’s son, and she holds him before moving on to the next heaven. On Earth, Tolbert arrives at the hospital and finds his assistant alive.

Eight years after her son’s death, Annie is working as a nurse. She is haunted by the knowledge of Eddie’s sacrifice and grieves her son on the anniversary of his death. Distracted, she mistakenly gives a patient the wrong medicine, nearly killing him. By the time Annie is nearing 30, she is doing little other than going through the motions. One day, she sees Paulo, and the two experience a fast reunion. They move in together and soon plan to marry.

In the final heaven, Annie finds Paulo, who died shortly after the lung transplant. She is horrified to see him, but also grateful to be near him again. Paulo tells Annie that the pain of life is what makes her heart full and informs her that she still has work to do on Earth as a nurse. He sends Annie back into the world of the living, where she wakes from a coma. In the months that follow, Annie offers her forgiveness to Tolbert and visits Ruby Pier. She tells a worker that she feels nothing but gratitude for Eddie’s sacrifice, unlike the anger and guilt she once felt. She gives birth to a child she conceived with Paulo on the night of their wedding. Annie names her daughter Giovanna, and one day plans to tell her all about her experiences in heaven.