 |
| Hardcover Edition |
One morning in the small town of Coldwater, Michigan, the phones start ringing. The voices say they are calling from heaven. Is it the greatest miracle ever? Or some cruel hoax? As news of these strange calls spreads, outsiders flock to Coldwater to be a part of it.
At the same time, a disgraced pilot named Sully Harding returns to Coldwater from prison to discover his hometown gripped by miracle fever. Even his young son carries a toy phone, hoping to hear from his mother in heaven.
As the calls increase, and proof of an afterlife begins to surface, the town--and the world--transforms. Only Sully, convinced there is nothing beyond this sad life, digs into the phenomenon, determined to disprove it for his child and his own broken heart.
Moving seamlessly between the invention of the telephone in 1876 and a world obsessed with the next level of communication, Mitch Albom takes readers on a breathtaking ride of frenzied hope.
*****
The First Phone Call from Heaven
Author : Mitch Albom
Published this edition : November 2013
Pages : 323
Language : English
Genre : Fiction, life lesson
Age recommendation : 13+
This is my first Mitch Albom book. Though I know how popular he is, I haven't encountered a book fate with his. Actually, I bought the book a long time ago, circa 2015, and with a lot of determination, I decided to dig into my piles of unread books, and found this blue cover.
It is started with a mysterious call from a deceased son to his father, a sister to her little sister, a mother to her daughter, and a worker to his former employer. All calls are from the dead to the grieving human and all happen in a small town namely Coldwater where a lot of people have a strong religious faith.
All those calls happened on Friday, every week. Confused and disbelieved, the call recipient has a mixed reaction whenever receiving the call. It feels like they have been given a second chance to have interactions with them, who left early.
The first confession happened during a mass praying inside a church. Two people are confessing that they received a call from the dead. First, is Katherine Yellin, a realtor that has been obedient in the church, and second is a hardworking employer, that always honest and rarely speaks in the crowd.
And then, the gossip spread through the town until local news picks it up and makes a story on the television, and soon enough it becomes nationally aware. The effects are unanticipated. There are a lot of people from other cities who come to Coldwater. They are roaming the city by the van, congestion happened, queues in the diner and petrol stock is limited. Some people think a miracle happen in Coldwater. Religious people pray and hail Katherine as a holy person. Some people just stay at Coldwater, purchasing the same handphone model with the hope that someone they loved calls them from heaven.
Meanwhile, Sully Harding, a veteran aero man just released from the prison and comes back to Coldwater only to witness the madness. His wife passed away when he was in the prison, his 7-year-old kid demand a phone so his mother can call him, and most of all he was pissed if it were true, why did his wife never call him? He will investigate this, and prove that there is something fishy about the call from heaven.
After all, the chief of the police department also received a call from his deceased son. Jack Sellers didn't dare to tell people that he also receives the strange call every week, because Jack couldn't find the logic behind it even though deep down he's looking forward to the call.
Between Sully Harding tried his best to expose this strange call, some people enjoy its popularity and even gain a profit from the call. The handphone issuer, the city, and of course the mayor. Meanwhile, the religious elder was skeptical about the miracle even though it made his church fully packed in Sunday mass for the first time.
I think this is a provoking story that crosses over so many phenomena that exist in our life. About a handphone phenomenon that made us anxious whenever we go especially when we waiting for someone important to call, then there is a religious faith that is sometimes beyond logical- that most people embraced a miracle in their life, and the unfinished business lingering between the left behind and the passed away. Also, the Author stitches the story with the background story of how Alexander Graham Bell invented a phone call.
The premise is wonderful, yet it lacks emotional bonding. Maybe it is because so many protagonists in the book and the pages are not that many so the emotion is not fully developed. Though there is a twist at the end of the book, yet, I can detect it in the early chapter of the book.
This book is about a life lesson that Albom's undoubtedly forte that made us think a lot about miracles and the unfinished business with someone who passed away in our life. This is a story about how humans basic's need to redeem their wrongdoing in the past. I understand it and agree. Yet, I feel like watching flash news that I don't develop an emotional relationship with at least one of his characters.
I will try to read other Albom's books for sure because it is not a bad book. It is just me being Asian :)
Comments
Post a Comment