What if you could have just one more day with a loved one who has passed away? Gayle talks to author Mitch Albom, whose latest novel, For One More Day, is topping the best-seller charts. In it, a young man whose mother has passed away gets the opportunity to spend "one last day" with her, resolving all the things he didn't say to her when she was alive.
Mitch says he came up with the idea shortly after his second book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, was published. "Many of [the readers] came up to me after that book was written and said…'What I wouldn't give for one more hour, for one more day with so-and-so.' So I started listening to who these people were and most often it was a parent. We just have this baggage that we don't take care of when we're here. We don't apologize, we don't get an explanation, and then they're gone. Everybody wants that one day back, over again."
Mitch also talks about his first novel, Tuesdays with Morrie, the true story of Mitch's relationship with his mentor, Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. The book is now the best-selling memoir of all time, with more than 11 million copies sold worldwide, but Mitch tells Gayle he never expected its success. Oprah even produced a TV movie based on the book!
"I only wrote that book to pay Morrie's medical expenses," he says. "It wasn't supposed to be a big book. I took all the money, gave it to him, he paid his bills and that was the end of it…I had to beg and plead to find a publisher to publish it."
Mitch tells Gayle he is drawn to write books that are sentimental. "I try to write stories that are in people's hearts," he says. "I know that in our heart of hearts, [sentimentality] is what's in our hearts. I write because I'm interested in that."
