by Fannie Flagg (Random House, 2006)

Elner Shimfissle, age 86, is probably the most liked person in Elmwood Springs, Missouri. She’s also one of the strangest people in town. Always excited about new experiences, Elner insists on watching the sunset from her porch every day, because

 she said they are all different and watching them crowns her day.
Elner also liked to make fig preserves, and she wanted to use figs just picked from the tree. One morning she climbed a ladder to reach the figs at the top of the tree, and was attacked by a hive of wasps. She fell backward off the ladder and got 17 wasp stings. She was dead on arrival at the hospital from anaphylactic shock. The hospital personnel put her on a bed in a darkened room to await the funeral home.
For several hours the communication lines in Elmwood Springs were heated up by friends reporting her death, ordering flowers for her funeral, arranging for food for the family and to clean her house.
Meanwhile Elner is led into Heaven by her long-deceased sister, Ida. She finds Heaven to be everything she wanted it to be, but after a short while she is sent back to Earth.
In mid-afternoon her family is standing around her bed, thinking their own thoughts about her demise, when she suddenly sits up and starts talking. The whole town reels at the news and tries to un-do all the preparations.
The unforgettable characters in the book include my favorite, Tot Whooten, the town’s hairdresser. Tot said, “If there was a fool within fifty miles, they [her children] had either married it or had numerous offspring with it.” Seeing a woman wearing a T-shirt that said “Someone Wonderful Calls Me Grandma,” Tot decided her T-shirt would have to say, “A Lot of Potential Criminals and Misfits Call Me Grandma.” She gave her son money to get a vasectomy, but he spent it on an off-road vehicle instead.
You’ll go a long way before you’ll find a more humorous book than this one. It’s a warm, satisfying read, and I highly recommend it.