Heaven Is for Real is the story of the Burpos’ son Colton, now 14, who at 4 nearly died from a ruptured appendix. During his time on a hospital operating table, he later told his parents, he experienced a trip to Heaven where he heard angels singing and sat on the lap of Jesus. The Burpos dismissed the accounts as a child’s Sunday school-fed fantasy until Colton started telling them about visits with people he’d never even known about — people like Todd’s grandfather, who had died decades earlier, and a daughter the Burpos lost in a miscarriage before they had Colton.
Bill Newcott pulls up a pew with Sonja and Todd Burpo.
Bill Newcott pulls up a pew with Sonja and Todd Burpo.
It was an intensely personal family experience that Todd says he didn’t even want to write about at first. But then, “People I didn’t even know would come up, knock on our door, and say ‘God told me to tell you that you should write a book.’ I heard it so much, I began to think maybe these people weren’t crazy, and maybe it was what God wanted me to do. But I was resisting it all the way.
“So I said to God, ‘I’m not going to call anyone from the publishing world. If they discover me here in little Imperial, Nebraska, I’ll write the book.’ I felt I was pretty safe. Then I got a phone call: ‘You don’t know who I am, but I’m with a literary agency and I’ve heard about your son’s story. I’d like to help you write a book.’ ”