A glittering party on a luxury yacht ends in tragedy when the boat explodes. All hands are presumed dead, but a few survive by crowding on a life raft. After drifting for a few days a new passenger joins the raft, a man who claims to be "The Lord". He asserts that as soon as everyone on the life raft believes he is who he says he is, they will be saved. As days stretch into weeks on the raft tragedies happen, but so do miracles. Some of the passengers come to believe in "The Lord" while others remain very skeptical. A year later, a police investigator is led to a life raft of the yacht, and finds, in a waterproof pouch, a journal of one of the initial survivors on the raft. As the inspector tries to piece together what happened on the raft, he comes to understand his own grief better.
This is by the same author as Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. It is a new-age Christian parable. It is a little heavy handed in its theological agenda, but I liked it anyway. Albom is a good writer and his primary characters are fully formed and sympathetic. He is also pretty good a describing the physical experience of having 13 people crammed on a rubber life boat. Even though some horrendous things happen in the narrative, it is, over all, a "feel good" story that fed my soul. It would be a good book club title because it is short, well written, and suggests a lot of philosophical questions. (249 p. 2021)
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