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Mitch Albom has mesmerized readers around the world with his number one New York Times bestsellers, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Now he returns with a beautiful, haunting novel abuot the family we love and the chances we miss.

For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that lasts a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?

As a child, Charley Benetto is told by his father, "You can be a mama's boy or you can be a daddy's boy, but you can't be both." So he chooses his father, and he worships him -- right up to the day the man disappears. An eleven-year-old Charley must then turn to his mother, who bravely raises him on her own, despite Charley's embarrassment and yearnings for a complete family.

Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding.

And he decides to take his own life.

He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother -- who died eight years earlier -- is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing had ever happened.

I read Mitch Albom's column frequently and I have read both Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet In Heaven. I don't like his writing as much as I (generally) like his ideas. I was as excited about the "For One More Day" idea as I have been for anything he has written in a long time. I even made sure to attend the charity event held to promote the book.

I try to think that my expectations didn't get the better of me, but it would appear that they did. I didn't like For One More Day for two main reasons: it was too similar to The Five People You Meet In Heaven and the main character was not one I could support.

While I understand that the plot lines were entirely different in The Five People You Meet In Heaven and For One More Day, one thing seemed too similar. Both books featured visits from and conversations with people who had died. Those people came to the story and told about things that happened during their time alive which affected our protagonists indirectly. The anecdotes were meant to help the characters see the big picture about life and how the things we do affect other people and the things people who love us do to protect us without us ever knowing. They are both good lessons, but all I am saying is that I want to see the Vegas odds that Mitch Albom's next book will focus on interaction with a person or people beyond the grave.

This book chronicled what leads to a new lease on life for a man who was down and out. He was past the point-of-no-return, or so he thought. Here was a man whose life had snowballed downhill years before and his daily dose of alcohol to bandage his problems had lost its effect. One main theme of the book is that no matter how old we get or how many things in life we achieve, there is still nothing that can substitute for Mom. I love that message.

I also like the other message from the book: that everyone deserves a second chance, but that is where this book lost me. Charley's life did not turn out the way he had planned, but the only reason he was able to become anything at all was because of his mother. The problem was that when he wasn't directly treating his mother poorly it was because he was too busy ignoring her. Charley was saved from himself by One More Day with his (deceased) mother. She told and showed him how she cared for him, the things she did for him that went unnoticed. The stories of sacrifice give Charley a desire to make right the times he had been wrong.

This was not the Mother-Son story I had expected. I had expected a story-book answer to the question, "If you could spend one day with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?" That question would have been posed to a man whose mother was taken from him, and he could choose to spend the day with anyone. And he would choose his mom. For One More Day answers, instead, the question, "What can save a man who is, by his own account, beyond being saved?" And I did not feel that Charley deserved a visit from his mother. While it shows that a mother's love is eternal and I did not want to see Charley successfully take his own life, I thought it was too easy. Like everyone, I felt that Charley does deserve a second chance (even though he had technically had many already), but I felt like he should have had to work harder to get it.

The problem I have with Mitch Albom's writing is that usually he is too narrative, too detached. I felt the same way here. This story deserved more emotion. It needed more passion. Stories since the beginning of time marvel at the power of a mother's love, but reading For One More Day I only felt a mother's pain because her child would not love her back. You may be able to support that child, but I could not.

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