For One More Day
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Working through regret
Charley "Chick" Benetto, the antihero of For One More Day, is fond of saying that an experience was "good and bad," which could describe this second novel by Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven). Structured as an "as told to" story, the book begins just as Chick's life has hit rock bottom. A failed major league baseball player numbed by alcohol and a series of soul-sucking jobs, he is painfully alienated from his wife and grown daughter. Returning to his hometown to end it all, Chick instead "wakes" in a magical state where those we love can be called back just by our memories of them. Chick is given the gift of a "do over," one more day to spend with his dead mother. As the two talk, his mother's deep love for her family, her hard work at several jobs so her children could go to college and have a more certain future, and her struggles as a divorcee in a small town are revealed. So are Chick's single-minded longing for his absent father's approval and his unrealistic dreams of glory when he busts out of the minor leagues to become backup catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Chick glimpses some of his family's eternal mysteries, like why his parents divorced, and begins to ask the right questions and listen as a man rather than a boy. While characters often spout pat wisdom like "it's a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it" and "sticking with your family is what makes it a family," Albom also hits a few literary home runs in this touching story. After getting the call that his mother has died, Chick describes the message as "different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They . . . pound away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain." Chick's journey allows readers to think about how they would climb their own mountain of regrets.
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