Mitch Albom, the internationally renowned and best-selling author of books such as For One More Day and The Time Keeper will be writing and publishing a fictional story inspired by the strange time we find ourselves in. 

Human Touch will be a serial published every week. The first instalment was released on the 10th of April. Click here to catch up and read the next section of this story every Friday. 

Human Touch is a fictional, serialized story about how lives intersect in the time of Coronavirus. Set in a small town in Michigan, the story follows the citizens of one street corner and their four homes, north, south, east and west. The characters include a doctor and his family, a pastor and his family, an old man and his wife who run the local cider mill, and a young Chinese couple with a Haitian housekeeper, whose 8 year-old son, Little Moses, becomes a focal point.

As the virus takes root in America, we see how this once neighborly street corner begins to fray. A tradition of Saturday gatherings unravels into mistrust and distance. Self-protection dominates over kindness. Only Little Moses seems immune to what is happening around him. He continues to spread his own brand of joy and comfort. AS people in the neighborhood are isolated with the virus, he secretly visits them and offers hugs and physical contact. Human touch. When his mother reveals a long-held secret about him - that is has never been sick, that his blood somehow protects him against everything - Little Moses becomes a medical curiosity, then a target, as certain forces think there is money to be made in his capture. When he disappears, the street corner must pull together, despite their self-enforced distancing,  to return him to safety.

Human Touch will be written week at a time, for approximately 8 weeks. It is truly a story in real-time. The goal is to provide a new piece of fiction as a diversion for readers and to inspire those who can to donate to a charity that takes care fo the very type of people I am writing about, here in Detroit and elsewhere.