Randolph, MA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/06/2015 --Imagine this. You die heroically, and you meet the Angel Gabriel. He tells you that, as a reward for your good deed, you can go back to Earth and relive any five days of your life that you choose.

How would you select five days from your whole life? Would you pick days so perfect that you wouldn't change a thing about them? Or would you choose days that required you to make pivotal decisions -- and, with the benefit of hindsight, would you now make different decisions during those days that would change the course of your life and the lives of your loved ones?

That's the dilemma that greets high school Algebra teacher Mike Postman during a particularly draining day in Matt Micros's novel, Five Days: Which Days Would You Choose. The protagonist, Mike, is a 40-year-old who walks along the Connecticut shoreline on an Autumn day, and he hears the faint shout of a little boy as he comes around the bend. "Mister! Mister! My friend just fell off the pier...please help!"

Mike doesn't hesitate. He throws his jacket onto the ground, kicks off his shoes, and dives off the pier headfirst. He manages to get the drowning boy over to his friend who lifts him onto the pier so that he's safe, but then he finds it's so much easier to just close his eyes, let go, and float away peacefully rather than to swim to the pier himself and save his own life, too.

So Mike dies a hero with one hitch: he may have committed suicide, and suicides are not encouraged by the management team of the afterlife. While it's not condemned outright, suicides certainly don't get treated in the same way as heroes ... except in cases, such as Mike's, when it's tough to differentiate between heroes and those who took their own lives.

As readers watch Angel Gabriel give Mike the gift of choosing five days that he could go back home and relive, we're challenged to think about which days we would select, if we could. Would we choose to have one last day with the person we loved the most so that we could say everything we'd always wanted to say? Would we elect to try to reverse a mistake that we once made? Or would we opt to simply have the experience of the most blissful day imaginable to enjoy one more time?

About Five Days: Which Would You Choose
The character takes us on a journey through events of modern history both heroic and tragic. And on the question of ending one's life prematurely, readers are left to ponder whether suicide is always a mistake that overshadows everything good you've done for others, or whether it's just ... a choice, perhaps one that's made on the spur of the moment and wouldn't ever be a choice you could defend or would repeat. Could it be that suicide isn't enough to prevent you from entering heaven ... but that the important thing to remember is that things are seldom as dire as they may appear?

Five Days: Which Would You Choose?
By Matt Micros
Micropulous Press
ISBN: 978-0692206843
http://www.mattmicros.com