Brent, a fourteen-year-old boy who loves baseball, playing the violin, and delivering papers, is severely beaten by a gang of four boys for an indiscretion he didn't commit in the year 1972. He awakens from a coma and catatonic state after more than three years. He has an amazing tale to share about the time he spent in the Waiting Room, a place spirits go to await disposition while their bodies are in a coma or catatonia. While in the Waiting Room, Brent learns to love God's Word and reads and studies it with fervor. In the meantime, his family, who'd like nothing better than to punish the four boys, now in prison, experiences changes in their lives that lead to changed hearts and the capacity for forgiveness. The four gang members also experience changed hearts, despite terrible things that happen to them while in prison. This is a story of how God changes hearts and how even badly wronged people can have a spirit of forgiveness, if only they have the strength of will to ask God for it.
Brent begins his God-given commission of telling the people about God's love and forgiveness after his spirit is returned to his body and he awakens from his catatonic state. His first assignment is as the guest speaker at the high school graduation, which would have been his graduating class if he hadn't spent more than three years of his life in a catatonic state. Though his family is relieved that the entire ordeal is over, Brent knows that it's not. In fact, it is just the beginning.