The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of child abuse and graphic violence.

The narrator explains that the novel is a story about Annie, who, because of her youth, “never thought about endings” before her death (1). The story begins as Annie dies, though the narrator promises that “all endings are also beginnings” (1).

In life, Annie was a strong woman who worked as a nurse at a local hospital. She was saved by Eddie (of The Five People You Meet in Heaven) at Ruby Pier as a child and just before her death, marries her best friend from grade school, a man named Paulo. The following sequence is a countdown of the final 14 hours of Annie’s life, in which she walks down the aisle and sees an old man in the crowd who seems familiar but whom she cannot place, as well as a hot air balloon in the sky; dances with her new husband; and thinks back on how they came in and out of each other’s lives since they met as children. She remembers the doubts she felt as her wedding approached because “[w]henever [she] plan[s] things, they don’t work out” (6).