Mitch Albom

And for the past 15 years, he's also operated an orphanage in Haiti.

Mitch Albom, welcome to Fresh Air.

Okay, so Mitch, in this book, Alfie has this incredible ability.

He can go back and relive any moment of his life.

And he uses it in the way that we all would expect to use it if we had this power, especially when he was a kid.

He used it to stop bullies, to impress girls.

But as he gets older, this power becomes more complicated.

What drew you to write about the darker side of this kind of fantasy?

So the rules are clear.

You can't make someone love you twice.

There's also a second rule here.

You also can't change when a person will die.

So basically, love and mortality are the two unchangeable forces.

What made you choose those particular limits?

You know, Mitch, there's also the lesson that really when you get to do things over and over and over, you don't really learn much.

This idea that as we get older, we become more set in our ways.

We don't take chances.

We don't try things.

We don't try new things.

We don't do things over.