Local author releases new memoir

This week marks the nationwide release of “Eyewitness to Heaven — Expanded Second Edition,” an engrossing new autobiography by author James Wilburn Chauncey.

This book reveals how in the mid-1940s Chauncey died of bacterial spinal meningitis. He was pronounced dead, covered with a white sheet to await the morgue and cremation. Several hours later, when two housekeepers entered the quarantined room, they were greeted by a most terrifying sight: A seven-year-old boy who was most certainly not dead — at least not anymore.

Though he suffered amnesia and couldn’t remember anything prior to getting sick, Chauncey vividly recalled his experience in paradise while dead. There, he was introduced to his three previously deceased siblings and shown a vision of his future and the future of the earth. Though considered a Miracle Boy, few people believed he was actually an Eyewitness to Heaven. Find out how Chauncey faced life’s trials like discrimination and health failures and finally decided tell the world of his powerful story.

Published by Tate Publishing and Enterprises, the book is available through bookstores nationwide, from the publisher at www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore or by visiting www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com.

Chauncey — who is known to most as Jim Chauncey, the alternate identity he created to avoid being paired up with the newspaper accounts of the Miracle Boy — retired after selling Associated Cost Engineers, Inc. in 1996. He has two grown daughters and currently lives in Fayetteville with his wife, Gwen.