Boy Whose Near-Death Experience Helped Launch Heaven Tourism Genre Says It Was All Made Up

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Until things came crashing back to earth. The cover of The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven calls the book “a true story.” But the boy himself now says it was not true at all. In 2015, Alex sent a letter to a conservative Christian blog dramatically renouncing the book. “I did not die. I did not go to Heaven,” he wrote. “I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. … People have profited from lies, and continue to.” Alex’s retraction also became a sensation, with reporters unable to resist the sudden, hilarious perfection of his last name: Malarkey.

Although The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven has been off shelves for years now, yanked by the publisher after Alex’s disavowal, the drama around it has quietly continued to roil. In 2018, Alex filed a lawsuit against Tyndale House, a major Christian publisher based in suburban Chicago, accusing the company of defamation and exploitation, among other charges. He’s seeking a payout at least equal to the book’s profits. Alex, who turned 21 in 2019, now lives with his mother. He was valedictorian of his high school, but he has been a quadriplegic since the accident and requires full-time care. Kevin and Beth divorced in 2018, and Beth says she has no idea what happened to the money Kevin earned from the book. The suit alleges that she and Alex are “on the verge of being homeless.” Alex was a minor when the book was published, and claims he was not a party to the contract. (Tyndale says in court filings that Kevin entered into an agreement on his own and Alex’s behalf, and that while Beth was not party to the contract, she “consented as a matter of fact” to the book’s production by helping to arrange interviews and supplying family photos.) A judge has dismissed most of the lawsuit’s counts. The next court date is scheduled for August 2019.

According to Alex and his mother, it was Kevin Malarkey who turned an injured boy’s murmurings about angels into a complex story of a journey to heaven and back. As Alex’s lawsuit describes it, Kevin “concocted” the story that Alex had gone to heaven. Though Alex was billed as the book’s co-author, he told me he has never even read the full contents of The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, let alone knowingly contributed to it. He said that some of the passages under his name were drawn from conversations with his father, but he didn’t realize they were intended for a book. “I didn’t write it,” Alex told me. “I have no idea what’s in it. I don’t know what I said.” He knows enough about the book, however, to feel sure that it doesn’t represent what really happened.

No one spoke up to defend the book after Alex recanted his version of events. Tyndale caved quickly, not only taking the book out of print but also announcing it was “saddened to learn” that Alex now claimed to have made up the story. In the years since, the book has come to seem to most people like a straightforward case of fakery and exploitation. Kevin Malarkey, who had been the book’s chief promoter, stopped giving interviews the day of his son’s disavowal. He has not spoken to the press in more than four years. He disappeared so completely that the Washington Post reported in 2018 that he was dead. Until 2019, one afternoon, he finally decided to tell his version of the events that rocked the Christian publishing industry and tore his own family apart.

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https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/07/the-boy-who-came-back-from-heaven-christian-book-scandal.html