Gladys Hight lives alone in a cozy little house in southeastern Wisconsin. Occasionally, her family has heard her speaking with Harry, her husband, who died four years ago. Her daughter, Patty, the type-A opposite of Gladys, worries about her mother’s sanity. At 78, even Gladys has her doubts.

When she assumes she’s alone in the house one Sunday, a stranger suddenly appears and begins talking to her as if he has known her forever. In spite of discovering an unexpected man in her house, Gladys is not frightened, though she does wonder anew if she’s losing her marbles. Complicating her self-doubt is the fact that the man smiling at her in her hallway looks just as she imagines Jesus would. Further, she discovers that no one else can see him or hear him as she can.

In the days and weeks that follow, Gladys’s friend convinces her that he is real, and that he is Jesus. More than that, he shows her how much he loves her, as he squires her through her formerly lonely days and accompanies her into wounds from her past. Not only does Gladys receive emotional healing, but she also serves as Jesus’s messenger for people around her, both family and strangers.

Though she had never wished for such a rare experience, nor even imagined such a thing possible, nothing in all her life impacts Gladys more profoundly than actually seeing and hearing Jesus.