Book Review: "The Light After Death: My Journey to Heaven and Back" by Vincent Todd Tolman

I believe I find a lot of my best reading material while randomly scrolling through Facebook, because I found this book when Mayim Bialik (aka: Blossom or Amy Farrah Fowler) mentioned it in a post talking about her interview with the author on her podcast. I was immediately drawn to the subject matter, so I ordered the book without having listened to the two part interview. Now that I’ve read the book (and avoided any spoilers), I’ll probably spend some time listening to the interview this week.

The Light After Death: My Journey to Heaven and Back by Vincent Todd Tolman is the true story of the author’s death and his trip to heaven before finally awakening from a coma three days later. It’s not a long story. The book is just 160 pages long, with Chapter 1 starting on page 19 (after the Foreword, Preface and Author’s Note). But don’t let the page count fool you…a lot can happen on the earth and in heaven in just 140 pages! Vinney wakes up one morning, drives to a friends house, drinks a strange protein drink, stops at a Dairy Queen to throw up, and watches from above as a bunch of paramedics save one guy’s life and then they declare another man dead…before he’s being pulled up to heaven. Interesting way to spend a morning off from work, huh?

This isn’t the first time I’ve read someone’s account about their near death experience. In 1992, Betty Eadie published her book, Embraced by the Light, and it became a New York Times Bestseller. Everyone was reading it. In fact, her book is even mentioned in the foreword to this book. From what I remember of Betty’s story, there are a lot of similarities, but also a lot of uniqueness, between her and Vinney’s stories. Each of the authors tell their own unique stories of meeting with guides in heaven and being given insight into what to expect in the afterlife. This isn’t to say that because these confessions are so different, then they must be made up. Au contraire…it begs the question of how these two stories can be brought together to bring us closer to understanding the concept of life after death.

Another book and author that was mentioned in the foreword to Vinney’s book is Return from Tomorrow by George G. Ritchie (originally published in 1978), about his near death experience during WWII. I admit that I have never heard of this book, but I have every intention of reading it. I’ve ordered a used copy of both Betty and George’s books from Amazon, and I hope to post a blog in the very near future about all three of these books, along with my thoughts on Mayim’s interview with Vinney Tolman.

Also on my to-do list this week, is to rewatch What Dreams May Come (1998) starring Robin Williams. Though this story is fiction, it’s been said that the images of heaven in this film are incredibly close to what heaven actually looks like.