Book Review

The First Phone Call from Heaven

of the love they’re surrounded by, the light they live in, the peace they share with all they’re with. Robbie assures Jack that the “the end is not the end.”

A few months ago I reviewed Mitch Albom’s recent bestseller “The Stranger in the Lifeboat,” the first novel by Albom I’d read. I just finished another of his novels, his 2013 “The First Phone Call from Heaven.” It has many of the fine qualities Albom displayed in “Lifeboat.”

First, there’s the way Albom makes you care about his cast of characters. The protagonist is Sully Harding, a career Navy flier booted out and put in the brig for 10 months for one tiny, harmless mistake on his part and a huge mistake on the part of another. During his brig time his wife Giselle died leaving their 5-yearold son with Sully’s parents in the small town of Coldwater in northern Michigan.

All this happened just before the novel opens with Sully back in that small hometown, grieving, angry, jobless, and clueless about what should come next after the life he loved has fallen to ruin.

The other main characters are distinct human beings every reader will recognize—police chief Jack Sellers, whose wife Doreen divorced him after their son Robbie was killed in Afghanistan; real estate agent Katherine Yellin, a single woman dearly missing her recently passed sister Diane; Tess Harper, a daycare owner living alone in the house she grew up in and missing her departed mother; young librarian Liz, a possible future love interest for Sully; and news reporter Amy Penn, in Coldwater to cover the town’s big story.

That “big story” provides the plot of the novel. It seems that seven folks in Coldwater start getting phone calls from their departed loved ones—Jack and Doreen from Robbie, Katherine from Diane, Tess from her mom. They all recognize the voices as those of their loved ones. The voices all speak

Once these calls get into the news, Coldwater, a village of just over 3,000, becomes the center of national and even international attention. Travelers come from all over hoping for such a call from their loved ones. They form prayer groups in the yards of “the chosen” ones. They fill the pews of the Baptist church where Katherine first broke the news and the Catholic church where Tess attends.

They fill every vacant spot in town and camp in fields at the edge of town. Coldwater’s one cafe has to stay open 24/7 just to feed everyone. Protesters soon follow, adding to the growing crowds and claiming the calls are a hoax and disrupting the prayer groups with chants like “This life, not the next.” Yet the calls keep coming.

Television news crews descend upon the town, from larger neighboring towns, from Detroit, and even from New York, with ABC’s Nightly News anchor on site. You can imagine the impact on “the chosen,” who’d first been shocked and then comforted by the repeated calls from heaven but who increasingly feel almost assaulted.

Our protagonist Sully, in his grief over the loss of Giselle, is among the doubters. He’s not among “the chosen,” and he does not much believe in any form of afterlife. He’s convinced the calls are a hoax—perpetrated not by those getting the calls but by someone somehow convincing them that they’re hearing from those they dearly miss.

So Sully starts looking for leads. As the plot thickens, he develops several suspects and begins checking them out: the operator of the town’s cell phone store, the lady at the funeral home who writes the obituaries, the town newspaper’s single reporter. Will one of them be a hoaxer? Or will it be someone unsuspected? Or are the calls genuine and Sully wrong? Clues pop up and then lead to dead ends as Albom keeps you guessing.

The novel climaxes with a huge event at the high school’s stadium with Katherine and the other “chosen” on a raised platform, the bleachers filled, dozens of TV cameras pointed all around. Katherine has agreed to have Diane’s call broadcast and to ask Diane to answer some questions. Suddenly simultaneous calls come to all the other “chosen” there on the platform, and then Katherine’s cellphone rings.

Sully is not there. He’s speeding to the spot he hopes to catch his latest suspect in the act. What a surprise awaits Sully when he gets there! What another surprise awaits him as he heads back to Coldwater!

A cover blurb calls the novel a beautiful tale of faith and redemption. I couldn’t agree more. N

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