64 pages • 2 hours read
Here One Moment
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Video Summary
About
In Liane Moriarty's Here One Moment, passengers on an ordinary flight receive shocking predictions about when and how they'll die from a fellow traveler, forcing them to confront their deepest fears and desires. Follow this gripping story in this short video summary.
Transcript
Cherry Lockwood boards a flight as a grieving widow. She disembarks as "The Death Lady"—having predicted the death of every passenger aboard. In "Here One Moment," author Liane Moriarty explores what happens when fate meets free will at 30,000 feet.
Dehydrated and delirious from grief after losing her husband, Cherry stands in the aisle and delivers chilling prophecies. Workaholic Leo will die in a workplace accident at 43. Nurse Sue will succumb to pancreatic cancer at 66. Baby Timmy will drown at 7. Software engineer Ethan will die from assault at 30. Newlywed Eve will be murdered by her partner at 25. Flight attendant Allegra will die by suicide at 28.
What Cherry doesn't remember is making these predictions at all.
The passengers' lives transform overnight. Paula frantically enrolls baby Timmy in swimming lessons. Sue gets medical tests and starts dancing with her husband. Leo questions his demanding career for the first time. Allegra opens her heart to love and pursues pilot training. The predictions become a bizarre gift—forcing people to confront their mortality and start truly living.
But then some predictions start coming true. A young passenger dies in a car accident exactly as foretold, sending panic through the survivors. Are they doomed by fate, or can they change their destinies?
Here's the twist: Cherry isn't psychic. She's a retired actuary—an insurance professional who calculates death probabilities for a living. Her predictions were based on statistical analysis and subconscious observations, delivered during a grief-induced mental health crisis. She predicted Leo's workplace accident because he held a construction magazine. Ethan's assault because his arm was already in a cast.
Yet some predictions prove eerily accurate while others don't—raising profound questions about fate versus free will.
Moriarty masterfully weaves the butterfly effect throughout her story—Cherry's chaos creates ripple effects that transform lives as most passengers find the love and purpose they were missing. Timmy nearly drowns at seven as predicted, but those swimming lessons save him—and later lead to Olympic gold. In 'Here One Moment,' Moriarty shows how confronting our mortality doesn't seal our fate; it liberates us to rewrite it.