The Better Place: A This Side of Heaven Story

5/5 ( ratings)

You won’t find two people less alike than Marty Unruh and Stephanie MacKenzie. One is a twelve-year-old kid from the south side of Chicago whose mom has recently relocated them both-for the thirteenth time by Marty’s count-to a better place. Marty thinks his life would be just about perfect if he had a dog. Oh, and if his mom would change his name one more time to David or Jacob-anything but Marty. The other is a just-turned fifty-year-old socialite member of Chicago’s elite, who grew up on a wind-scoured island on the Great Lakes but now finds herself living in a mansion on the moneyed shores of Lake Forest. Steph thinks her life would be perfect if she could find the way out of her better place.

Perhaps it was because the wagyu beef seemed a tad stringy. Perhaps it was because her son shunned her. Or, maybe, just maybe it was because she walked in on her husband and her best friend in a delicate situation. Whatever the reason, Steph sneaked out of her fiftieth birthday party to run back to the only place she ever felt she belonged, her childhood home. Somewhere along the way, her vision distorted by her tears and the rain that is starting to splatter on the windshield, she gets lost. At the same time, Marty, bursting with the pride of new ownership, is out walking his new best friend for the first time. Their worlds are about to collide in a series of unfortunate coincidences and one well-intended but misbegotten case of interference that will end up with one of them ending up where the other one is supposed to be-the ultimate better place. In other words…D-E-A-D.

Like “The Shack,” the debut inspirational book by William P. Young and Mitch Albom’s wildly successful novels, The Better PLace explores the world that is waiting after this one. That “better place” offered up as a consolation prize to all who grieve. But, what happens when the person who shows up there, isn’t the one they were expecting? That Better Place doesn’t strive to answer any of the big questions. If we truly believe there is a better place where our loved ones go, why are we, as humans, so blatantly selfish about wanting them back? Can we be reborn out of tragedy into better persons than we were before? The Better Place doesn’t have the answers. Instead it has compassion and understanding and, perhaps, a small measure of comfort in portraying an afterlife that isn’t so different from here, inhabited by beings that aren’t so holier than us. Although this is a story about where we go when we leave this earth, you won’t read about God or saints. Angels, on the other hand, are around but not so you’d notice. Just like modern day vampires have hearts of golds, the angels in The Better Place have a few singed feathers and carnal tendencies.