Third-grader M.J. Vanderbilt, a leukemia survivor, knew there was no God. Her mother had said so. Overwhelmed by the reversals she has faced and the spectre of her daughter’s cancer, Lisa Vanderbilt told her daughter that no real God would ever have afflicted them with all the misery they faced.

Lisa wasn’t willing to tell M.J. all of the reasons behind her denial of God. One night – when the cancer was at its worst – an exhausted and frightened Lisa stepped away from M.J.’s bedside for a moment to a hospital chapel, where she fervently prayed that her child would live. At that moment, the child’s heart stopped.

The doctors managed to resuscitate M.J., but Lisa – shaken that God tried to take her child while she was away from her side – decided she had no use for a deity who was so contemptuous of her that He would take her child’s life even while she was on her knees begging for mercy. 

But even Lisa didn’t know the real story. When M.J. tells her best friend, John, that she and her mother think God is just a myth, his shock and dismay triggers an argument that ends with M.J. recalling events the young girl should never have been able to remember. And a chance sidewalk meeting with a disabled veteran leads M.J. to discover what really happened that night in the hospital … about her own death … and about the transcendent power of love.