He dies and comes back as a book. He is a war hero whose bravest act each day is to climb out of bed, he is an ex-con, free at last, who turns his rented room into a prison cell, he is a lonely widow, without family or friends, whose mood lifts when she is sent to the hospital with Covid, he is a weekend dipsomaniac, a reclusive polyglot, a nun with a gambling habit, he is an antiwar activist who travels across country by train to bury his brother in Arlington National Cemetery, he is a husband and wife stuck in an unglued marriage, he is a pair of troublesome twins, Alice and Alex, nicknamed Alas and Alack by their fed-up father, he is a travel guide who arranges small wars for tourists, he is an atheist who awakes from a coma speaking in tongues, he is his father, his mother, his brothers, all gone, he is a writer who dies and comes back as a book.