Gotta Be You
J.R. DeHavilland
Type: Beta project
Genre: Contemporary, literary, book-club fiction
Word count: 88,000
Sam Whitfield dies on Christmas Eve. St. Peter admits him to Heaven. Sam turns him down. He won’t take eternity without his wife of forty-four years. He negotiates seventy-two hours back on Earth, without revealing he died, to repair what love, time, and good intentions left undone. Funny, warm, and quietly devastating: a love story that begins at the end.
What's this?
Sam Whitfield dies on Christmas Eve, between one sip of coffee and the next, with a song stuck in his head. St. Peter reviews his file and admits him to Heaven. Sam turns him down.
Sam refuses eternity unless St. Peter assures him that Hope, his wife of forty-four years, will one day be admitted too. St. Peter makes no promises, but he bends the rules, sending Sam back to Earth for seventy-two hours, on one condition: he cannot reveal he died.
Sam doesn't go back to say goodbye. He goes back to learn how to truly stand beside his wife, and to fix what love, time, and good intentions quietly left undone. He has three days, one marriage, and a bureaucracy upstairs watching the clock.
Funny, warm, and quietly devastating, Gotta Be You is a story about marriage, regret, second chances, and one stubborn man who turned down Heaven for the woman he loves.
J.R. DeHavilland has been married long enough to know that love is mostly maintenance, and that the cabinet hinge you keep meaning to fix is never really about the hinge. Gotta Be You, his first work of fiction, is the result of wondering what a stubborn man would do if Heaven itself asked him to wait in line. J.R. DeHavilland is a pen name; the man behind it lives in the United States and Mexico.
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