The Five People You Meet in Paradise starts with Eddie, a maintenance man and war veteran, who works at Ruby Pier. He's doing his usual rounds, checking out the rides when he hears screaming. He turns his attention to a merry-go-round where the carts are tilted and people hold on to avoid falling. In an emergency, he alerts his colleague Dominguez so that he can bring him a ladder. The cable of the cart breaks, causing them to fall directly to where a little girl he had seen earlier was standing. He lunges forward, feeling her hand in his, then dies. We are then taken back to a past event, which ends up being the day Eddie was born. His father was in the hospital waiting room with other men, smoking nervously, waiting for his son to arrive, which he then experiences when the nurse takes him to the nursery. Continuing after the accident, Eddie finds himself on his way to heaven, wondering if the girl survived or why he feels no pain. The old physical and emotional pains are no longer a burden for him. Eddie now finds himself in an unfamiliar and more liberating Ruby Pier. The surroundings are drastically different and he can walk, leading him to the conclusion that he is at Ruby Pier 75 years before where he worked. Understanding very little of his situation and why heaven would be a place he didn't like very much, he meets a man in a circus tent with blue skin who he killed. As a child, Eddie ran into the street to retrieve his baseball when the Blue Man braked suddenly, swerved, and collided with a truck. This was all explained to Eddie to let him know that everyone is essentially related and that he will have to take care of his mother and take over his father's old position on the dock when she dies. Outside the restaurant, he interacts with a woman known as Ruby who talks about her husband and how he created an amusement park called "Ruby's Pier", which ultimately withstood a fire..