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1-Page Summary of For One More Day

Overall Summary

Mitch Albom’s For One More Day is a story about Charles Benetto, a former baseball player who has fallen on hard times. The narrator explains that they are telling the story from Chick’s perspective because he wouldn’t be believed if it wasn’t told in his voice. It consists of short chapters told in the first person and follows two parallel stories: one about what happens to him over the course of one day, while the other recounts memories from his life leading up to his mother’s death. Nearly every chapter ends with an episode or note from Chick’s past.

After his baseball career is over, Chick struggles to find work and his marriage crumbles. He loses contact with his family and alcoholism worsens. When he receives a letter from his daughter Maria telling him that she’s married, he realizes that he has no relationship with them anymore. He decides to end his life by driving back home where he had grown up, missing the exit for the town water tower on purpose so that when he gets there it will feel like fate pushed him to jump off of it. After waking up in heaven, which looks just like the baseball field where he played as a child, Chick finds out that everything was just a dream and later learns that Maria died during childbirth while giving birth to twins—a son who looks exactly like him and carries on their name (Chick) and a daughter who looks exactly like her mother (Maria).

The author’s mother was a hairdresser. She visited the homes of women who were unable to leave their houses and did her job there. The author went with his mother on this trip, and it reminded him of his childhood as well as recent events in his life.

Chick is a writer who tells the story of his parents’ marriage. His father was distant and secretive, whereas his mother encouraged him to do well in school. His father left when Chick was in fifth grade, but he remained close with his mother and gained a new appreciation for her sacrifices.

The end of the day comes, and they visit his father’s second wife. Chick finds out that when he was born, his father already had a son with her. Now he understands how much love his mother has for him, as well as forgiving himself for forgetting about this woman before. When the day ends, Chick wakes up in a field where police officers are trying to revive him after falling from the top of a building earlier in the day.

Chick tells the narrator that he’s lucky to have woken up from his coma without hurting anyone. The narrator then explains that in five years, Chick repaired his relationship with her and found a fulfilling job coaching children’s sports. Finally, she reveals that she is Maria, Chick’s estranged daughter.

Prologue

The narrator introduces the reader to Chick, who was a baseball player with a promising career. However, after making it to the World Series and failing, he tried to kill himself. The narrator states that she is going to tell his story as he told it to her that morning and asks the reader if they have ever lost someone they love and wanted one more chance for reconciliation or conversation before having to say goodbye forever. What if you got another chance?

Chapter 1: “Chick’s Story”

The story begins with Chick (the protagonist) narrating his life story. He is tired and somewhat hostile toward others, but he believes that people don’t really understand what happened to him. According to him, all anyone has is “life, how you mess it up, and who is there to save you.”

Chick’s mother died ten years ago. Her love and support were the key to his self-esteem, but after she died he realized that he was no longer happy. He also had a hard time keeping jobs and drinking heavily. His wife divorced him, his daughter didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore, and he felt like an embarrassment at family functions because of what people thought about him (he drank too much). So Chick decided it wasn’t worth living anymore.