What is the importance of Ruby Pier in the novel, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven?

Ruby Pier is the setting of Annie's great tragedy, the place where she is scarred for life. Despite the accident and permanent mark it leaves on Annie, she represses the memory of the incident and Ruby Pier then exists as a distant place in her subconscious. But Ruby Pier is also where Eddie and Lorraine have had important events occur in their lives, thus becoming a space where the three develop an emotional connection that they then discover in heaven.