Mitch Albom on his new book, 'The Stranger in the Lifeboat'
The best-selling author joins 'Fox & Friends Weekend' to discuss his new novel on faith and healing, available now.
At one time, Mitch Albom was the student - both literally and proverbially - in a now-famous paradigm with his then-Brandeis University professor, Morris S. Schwartz.
Morrie, as the world has come to affectionately know him, suffered and ultimately passed from Lou Gehrig's disease in his late 70s — but not before Albom would chronicle their final conversations together each and every Tuesday.
Today, 25 years later, Albom has assumed the role of the teacher — Morrie's role, perhaps — allowing the professor's timeless lessons to live on not just in his widely circulated "Tuesdays with Morrie," but in every book, conversation, and choice since.
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Released in 1997, "Tuesdays with Morrie" - a book about "An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson" - was almost never made, as most publishers were leery to take on the young journalist's memoir.
"We didn't think anybody was going to read it. I only wrote it to pay Morrie's medical bills," Albom told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
"And we were so shut out by publishers and so discouraged by publishers, most of whom said, 'not interested. Boring. Depressing. You're a sports writer. Nobody's going to be interested in hearing this from you.'"
Eventually, thanks to publisher Doubleday, the just-under-200-page book saw the light of day, hit the bestseller charts, and funded Morrie's medical bills from whatever profits Albom initially made.
"The rest was just gravy," Albom said.
"Tuesdays with Morrie" is…the wisdom of an older man, but it's the curiosity of a younger man." - Mitch Albom
Though the long-standing success of "Tuesdays with Morrie" no doubt altered publishers' perception of the young Mitch Albom - he would go on to write several subsequent bestselling novels – it was the shift in people's perception of the sports journalist-turned-memoirist that changed Albom as not just a writer, but as a person.
Author Mitch Albom at the Library of Congress' National Book Festival in Washington D.C. on Sept. 3. (Fox News)
"What began to happen right after I wrote that book is that people started talking to me in a different way. Instead of talking to me about sports… I would have people come up and say, "you know, my mother died of cancer. And the last thing we did was read your book together. Can I talk to you about her?" Albom said.
"And suddenly I was thrust into that role of a listener. And not to one or ten or a hundred or a thousand, but tens of thousands of broken-hearted stories of grief and missing people."
"It really forced me to grow up, and it forced me to recognize the sadness in the world and the heartbreak in the world, but also to try to see the beauty of the world when you survive that and when you can get through it. And so it really kind of pushed me into a different realm."
That realm, Albom says - stressing the importance of giving - is his charity work.
MITCH ALBOM TALKS ABOUT MISSION OF HIS HAITI ORPHANAGE AMID COUNTRY'S INSTABILITY, KIDNAPPINGS
Inspired by Albom's first non-fiction book since "Tuesdays with Morrie's" publication, "Have a Little Faith," the Have Faith Haiti Mission & Orphanage is a special place of love and caring, dedicated to the safety, education, health and spiritual development of Haiti’s impoverished children and orphans.
Founded in the 1980s, after falling on hard times following the devastating earthquake of January 2010, Albom and his A Hole in the Roof Foundation took over operations.
"Children are an absolute priority of my life… No good part of my life hasn't been around children or doing things for children," Albom told Fox News Digital.
"I'm there [in Haiti] every month… I'm there for the kids, for protection, for medicals, for schooling. I've got two kids up here now who go to college here in Michigan from the orphanage. So I'm taking care of them while they're here. I've got three little ones living with me at the moment because they have medical conditions," Albom said. "And I'm very content with that."
Headshot of author Mitch Albom, taken by Jenny Risher (Jenny Risher)
While Albom's philanthropic endeavors are no doubt inspirational, so are his other novels.
Following the success of "Tuesdays with Morrie," Albom went on to pen perhaps his most notable work, "The Five People You Meet In Heaven," [the film adaptation of which stars Jon Voight, Ellen Burstyn, Jeff Daniels, Michael Imperioli]. And with several other novels amounting to upwards of 40 million copies of his work being sold worldwide, Albom tells Fox News Digital he has no plans of stopping anytime soon.
"The current book that I have out now is "The Stranger in the Lifeboat," which I'm very proud of. And it's been really, really well-received - more than I never could have imagined," Albom said Tuesday.
"And I think that probably says something about the time that we're living in, because it's about a bunch of castaways in a life raft who call a body and who claims to be God. And they don't believe him."
"The whole idea of calling out for help and getting it in forms that we don't recognize is… it's probably something that everybody in these troubled times has given some kind of version of thought to."
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"I'm [also] working on another book which comes out next fall, next November," Albom added. "It's called "The Little Liar" and it's a historical novel that actually takes place during the Holocaust, which is something that, with the exception of "The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto," I don't do a lot of - you know, period stuff."
"But this particular story was important to set during that time because the whole backbone of it has to do with an incident that took place during the Holocaust."
The 25th anniversary edition cover of Mitch Albom's "Tuesdays with Morrie" (Mitch Albom)
So 25 years after "Tuesdays with Morrie," Albom has found no shortage of ways to make his old professor proud and keep his inspiring spirit alive. When asked if he would write his inaugural novel and only memoir any differently today as a "somewhere in his 60s" success story, Albom admitted he wouldn’t be able to.
"I started writing "Tuesdays with Morrie" immediately after he [Morrie] died. So all that was fresh in my mind and all of the experience that I had with him, but also who I was at the time, was all fresh," Albom explained Tuesday.
"If I had waited until now to write and somehow went back and found these tapes and wrote them, I couldn't write it from the perspective of a 30-something who was trying to figure his life out - because, for better or for worse, I'd be a 60-something who had done whatever he had done with his life."
"And I think part of the appeal of "Tuesdays with Morrie" is that it's the wisdom of an older man, but it's the curiosity of a younger man," Albom told Fox News Digital. "So I don't think I could have written it with that kind of innocence or that kind of naïveté if I had waited the 25 years and then tried to listen to the tapes and done it."
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On the wisdom Morrie taught him as a young man, Albom says they've become "three-dimensional" for him in the years since.
"I remember everything that Morrie said, not only because I went through it, but because I am always reminded of it," Albom said. "The lessons become more three-dimensional for me as I get older because I get why he was saying what he was saying when I first heard it."
"You know, when your mother tells you, 'don't touch the oven, it's hot.' Right? Your mother is telling you, 'don't touch the oven, it's hot.' But after you touch the oven and burn the skin off your finger, you have a new understanding. About what? Don't touch the oven. It's hot."
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"[So] I've now lived enough life to understand the things that he said about family and children, forgiving other people, charity, society, culture, marriage. You know, these are all things that I've gone through now. And so, as I say, it's three-dimensional, because it's his perspective and also my perspective… Just as an older person makes sense to you as you get older, so too does Morrie make more sense to me as I get closer to the age that he was when he was talking."
"Morrie certainly believed in the connective tissue of humanity. And I do, too." - Mitch Albom
And on how he might be like his old professor, Albom said it's Morrie's spirituality that he's adopted over time.
"[Morris] certainly believed in the connective tissue of humanity," Albom told Fox News Digital. "And I do, too,"
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