“If heaven is anything at all, it’s fun.” With that opening line Anthony Destefano sets a tone for his book that turns out to be as much fun to read as the place it is describing. Reading these words in the preface, I was buoyed up with the hope that A TRAVEL GUIDE TO HEAVEN would combine sound theological teachings on the afterlife with a bit of humor and grace – but without the stuffy jargon of philosophers. Destefano does not disappoint his readers. He gives us concrete images of heaven that we can grasp (a perfect rose, a beautiful sunset, breathtaking views) combined with new ideas of what it means to go on the vacation of our dreams (frolicking simultaneously with tame “wild” animals and even dinosaurs).
A little background on this book will help to explain its wonderlust theme. This international bestseller actually represents Destefano’s second attempt at writing a book on heaven. After attending 15 funerals of friends and relatives over a seven-month period, Destefano wrote his first manuscript, which he called HEAVEN, designed to make the afterlife more physically real than what the priests and ministers had done in the 15 funerals he attended. But this attempt at writing turned out to be so boring that Destefano never finished it.
A few months later on his fifth wedding anniversary, he wanted to treat his wife to a surprise overnight stay at a posh Beverly Hills hotel but found the hotel had lost his reservation. The Presidential Suite at the hotel was not in use that night, and when the hotel generously allowed him to stay in the suite instead, Destefano walked into a room so immaculately furnished that one might say it was a little piece of heaven on earth.