for one more day

This is a story about a family and, as there is a ghost involved, you might call it a ghost story. But every family is a ghost story. The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone.

A beautiful, haunting novel about 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 covers 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 โ€œChickโ€ Benetto was told by his father, โ€œYou can be a mamaโ€™s boy or a daddyโ€™s boy, but you canโ€™t be both.โ€ So he chooses his father, only to see the man disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence.

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 ever happened.

Albom has said his relationship with his own mother was largely behind the story of the book, and that several incidents in โ€œFor One More Dayโ€ are actual events from his childhood.

Winner of Spainโ€™s prestigiousย ย “La Pluma de Plata” Award.

“Mitch Albom sees the magical in the ordinary, giving character Chick Benetto the opportunity of having one more day to go back and share a moment in his life with his mother.”

Cecilia Ahern

author of "P.S. I Love You", Read more ยป

Extras

Reading Group Guide:
Mitch Answers Your Questions

Playlist

Songs that remind me of the book

The Movie

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