Sam Alden is the 17-year-old high school star player in baseball who seems to have it all. However, his family notices that he is often bothered with fits of coughing. Worried, his parents decide to take him to the hospital, where they are shocked to find out that he has a life-threatening heart disease. Sam has trouble dealing with his illness, but he pretends to still be a joyful teenager to not have his parents worrying even more than they already do. His health is deteriorating, though, and it is eventually revealed that he needs a heart transplant if he wants to survive. This is the beginning of a long journey, which is mentally and physically exhausting. Sam has countless operations, and tests. The search for a donor seems endless to him. Even before the final operation, Sam is forced to deal with several setbacks in his life.
After pulling a daring, if rather strange, bank heist while dressed as nuns, half of a four-member gang gets arrested and thrown in jail. While they're working on the chain gang, their partners in crime drive up with guns blazing and spring them. With everyone free, the leader of the gang announces that he's got a plan for another score that will be guaranteed to give them the notoriety they crave.
Will Penny, an aging cowpoke, takes a job on a ranch which requires him to ride the line of the property looking for trespassers or, worse, squatters. He finds that his cabin in the high mountains has been appropriated by a woman whose guide to Oregon has deserted her and her son. Too ashamed to kick mother and child out just as the bitter winter of the mountains sets in, he agrees to share the cabin until the spring thaw. But it isn't just the snow that slowly thaws; the lonely man and woman soon forget their mutual hostility and start developing a deep love for one another.
A knight in the service of a duke goes to a coastal village where an earlier attempt to build a defensive castle has failed. He begins to rebuild the duke's authority in the face of the barbarians at the border and is making progress until he falls in love with one of the local women.
From his birth in Bethlehem to his death and eventual resurrection, the life of Jesus Christ is given the all-star treatment in this epic retelling. Major aspects of Christ's life are touched upon, including the execution of all the newborn males in Egypt by King Herod; Christ's baptism by John the Baptist; and the betrayal by Judas after the Last Supper that eventually leads to Christ's crucifixion and miraculous return.