Eli Harpo's Adventure to the Afterlife

At four, Eli Harpo had emergency open-heart surgery, flatlined on the operating table, and, according to his father, went to heaven and met Jesus. His father is a loving, devout Baptist minister, and he has raised Eli to treat the story as fact.

Nine years later, Eli is not so sure. He accompanies his father to hospices to evangelize and to sell his father's self-published book, Heaven or Bust, and the routine feels strange and false. He has also started having sex dreams about Jesus.

At home, his mother has been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. Then the televangelist Charlie Gideon turns up on the family's doorstep. He wants to build an attraction based on Eli's trip to the afterlife at his Bible-themed park, and Eli cannot bring himself to refuse.

The Harpos set out by car from Kentucky to Bible World in Orlando. It is a comic family road trip, told with warmth, in which a boy's doubts about his faith and his sexuality ride alongside his growing view of his parents' flaws.

The question underneath the trip is what becomes of a family held together by a shared story once that story begins to fray.