encounter: a novel

This story of mine is kind of like a rainbow. Colorful lines leading somewhere and nowhere, where does it begin and when does it end. Jimmy Fitzsimons

Jimmy Fitzsimons is 15-years old and questions many things, including heaven. He loves baseball and his mother, but after her sudden death, he questions even more things. He feels lost, as the only person he's ever loved has been taken from him. Then four months later, on the night of the great mystery, Jimmy is given last rites and soon after pronounced dead from wounds he suffers in a fire. He awakens in the afterlife, where someone is waiting for him.

What follows is a journey many of us would love to have. To speak again with someone we loved and lost. To learn the truth. To forgive. And to have back a chance to say goodbye.

Jimmy is dead for over five minutes before his heart starts beating again. After he recovers from his wounds, he tells his story and the lessons he learns to the only person he thinks will believe him--a priest. A story of an extraordinary encounter, somewhere between this life and the next, with his mother who he thought he had lost forever, but somehow, found again.