The Power of Faith When Tragedy Strikes: A Father-Son Memoir

On a beautiful October day in 2010, eighteen-year-old Chris Norton jogged onto the football field on a kickoff for Luther College and was wheeled off on a stretcher after a routine tackle fractured his spine causing significant damage to his spinal cord. Given a 3 percent chance of ever moving anything below the neck, Chris awoke from surgery sixteen hours later defying the odds by shrugging his shoulder, beginning his long-fought journey to recovery with his family and biggest fan—father Terry—by his side.

Told through alternating chapters, this inspiring father-son memoir recounts a young man’s seemingly insurmountable quest to regain movement in every part of his body, and a father’s struggle to be the rock his son and family lean on in the face of their worst nightmare. Chris and Terry depict with brutal honesty the harrowing months they spent in rehabilitation and the years that followed where family, friends, and faith became the nucleus that saw them through. Chris’s graduation walk, marriage proposal, and courageous story have already inspired millions worldwide.