For One More Day

review by

Tina Gasperson

FOR ONE MORE DAY

by Mitch Albom

(Hyperion)

Reader Appeal: Adults and mature teens

Genre: Literary Fiction

When you first begin a journey, you think you have an idea about where you'll end up. For One More Day starts out like that – it i simple, elegant prose that tells the story of a man with regrets. But by the end of the story, you find yourself delivered beyond your expectations to timeless truth and an unexpected twist.

This is the story of Charles "Chick" Benetto, a has-been minor league baseball player who ruined his life with alcohol, losing his wife and alienating his children. Along with his tale is woven a thread that tells the story of his mother, Pauline, and the amazing love she had for her son – a love that he rejected over and over again, until it was too late.

As a boy, Chick's father tells him he has a choice to make: he can either be a daddy's boy or a mama's boy – but not both. Chick chooses the former, and spends the rest of his childhood and young adult years trying to please his emotionally and physically absent father by throwing himself into playing baseball – the only thing that makes dad happy.

Years later, Chick is absent when his mother dies because he's out playing in an "old-timer's" baseball game that his father arranged for him to participate in, and he realizes that in the process of trying to please his dad, he's lost everything that was really important. He carefully notes all the times he didn't stand up for his mother, and all the times she did stand up for him. And he wishes he could have just one more day with her.

Finally, alone and destitute, Chick decides to kill himself. On the way to visit his old family home and end it all, he gets into a head-on crash with a semi-truck. Instead of dying, though, he finds himself face to face with his long-dead mother at their old home.

Yes, this is a ghost story, purely fantastical. But I had no problem suspending my disbelief. Albom captivates with the clear simplicity of his words and a storyline that's interwoven with scenes from the past. The surprising and piercing end to the tale left me with an undeniable message of eternal truth.

Though I would have liked more development of some of the secondary characters, like Benetto's wife and daughter, the lack of that development didn't hinder the story. There's nothing here to complain about, and though the book is written for adults and probably best appreciated by adult sons and daughters, I would love to share this story with my own children when they are a bit older.

FAMILYFANS RATING:  A

 --TG