When Chase fell off his roof, he was a sports star. Everybody at school knew him, and many kinda feared him. Chase, you see, was also a bully. But after the fall, this bully lost his memory… and gained a new life.
When Chase fell off his roof, he was a sports star. Everybody at school knew him, and many kinda feared him. Chase, you see, was also a bully. But after the fall, this bully lost his memory… and gained a new life.
When 13-year-old Chase Ambrose woke up in a hospital bed, he didn’t remember falling off the roof of his house. He couldn’t remember why he was up there or what he was doing. In fact, when Chase came to after his 96-hour coma, he didn’t even remember his own name!
I mean, yeah, Chase can still tie his shoelaces and brush his teeth. All those motor skills are still intact. But everything else is completely gone. And the doctor says that Chase may not get any of his old memories back. He may … have to start from scratch.
Now, that sort of thing would be strange and maybe a little scary for anyone. But it’s doubly so for Chase, because when he gets back to school, he gets a lot of mixed signals.
Some of the kids treat him like a returning hero. It seems he was sort of a sports star. Football, soccer, baseball, badminton; you name it and Chase was the best. And that’s kinda cool.
But other kids don’t seem to like him at all. In fact, a bunch are clearly afraid of him. One girl in particular, someone named Shoshanna, gets so angry just seeing him that she pours her frozen yogurt on his head.
As time passes, Chase starts getting the idea that he and his “best buds,” fellow ballplayers Aaron and Bear, might not have been such great guys. For example, he was in the school hallway and stopped to help a girl who accidentally dropped her books. She took one look at him and ran away crying!
Chase can’t help but wonder: Who was I? What was I?
However, as Chase begins to meet more people and navigate this brand-new world, a bigger, more important question starts to tap-tap-tap on his brain: Who and what does Chase Ambrose want to be?
Starting over, Chase starts to make new friends. And one of them, Brendan, quotes Matthew 13:57: “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.”
There are no other references in the story to faith. However, Chase is constantly wrestling with his past wrongs—bad actions that he can’t even remembering doing—and trying to either correct those hurtful decisions or make better choices going forward. And at times, he’s tempted to fall back into some old negative patterns.
With the right tip of the head, you could easily see this as a redemption story with spiritual connections.
None.
Chase’s mom and dad are divorced, his dad remarried. And at first glance, the two adults couldn’t be more ill-suited for one another.
Mom, for instance, is timid. She shies away from expressing herself. And she obviously finds it difficult to honestly deal with the bully Chase used to be.
Chase’s dad, however, is a former sports star himself who only appears concerned with driving Chase to live up to his own level of athleticism and success. In fact, Dad is eager to get Chase clearance to play football again despite the boy’s extreme concussion and his doctor’s warnings.
One of the positive effects of Chase making better choices in his own life is that those choices spur his parents to show a better side of who they are. Mom finds it easier to express her love for her son. And after a while, Dad sees Chase’s changes and recognizes how positively they’re impacting people around him (including Dad’s new wife and daughter). Dad then goes out of his way to admit that he loves his son and is proud of him … even when off the sports field.
In general, the teachers and adults in Chase’s life don’t like him very much. Shoshonna and her parents literally hate Chase, Aaron and Bear for how they bullied Shoshonna’s brother, Joel. But we see the better version of Chase slowly win over people who held him in disdain. Many even stand up to vouch for him.
We see Chase with his school principal, Dr. Fitzwallace, a measured man who encourages Chase after he returns to school. “This is an awful thing that’s happened to you,” Fitzwallace tells Chase. “But it’s also presenting you with a rare opportunity. You have a chance to rebuild yourself from the ground up, to make a completely fresh start.”
Chase falls from his rooftop and lands shoulder-first, dislocating his shoulder and knocking him unconscious. He wears his arm in a sling for several days. He receives an extreme concussion and only regains small pieces of his memory by the story’s end.
Chase also crosses his former best friends because he wants to admit to a past misdeed that they all contributed to. They end up fighting and bashing one another around. (Ultimately Chase takes responsibility without including Aaron or Bear.) Chase also slams a different guy up against a wall for bullying someone.
Brendan posts videos to social media, and they generally involve Brendan getting into some form of tumbling mishap. In one shot he rides a tricycle into a thumping and freezing cold car wash, for instance. In another, dogs tackle and pin him down because he’s covered in syrup.
Chase and Shoshonna interview a retired war hero who talks about his past. He mentions dropping a grenade into the hatch of a tank and being horribly impacted by the results.
A girl, Kimberly, has a crush on Chase. And Brendan has a crush on Kimberly.
Chase has a chance to start over with absolutely no memory of any bad choices he’s made in the past. Are there any choices you’ve made that you’d like to forget?
Take a look at Jeremiah 31:34 and Isaiah 43:25. Both verses reference the fact that God said he would forgive our sins and then totally forget them. Is that better than forgetting them yourself?
If you had a chance to start over, what kinds of things would you do going forward? What did Chase do that made others respect him more? Can we do things like that without having memory loss?
What do you think motivated Chase and his buds to be mean to others? Why do you think Chase had such a great change of heart? Can anyone change their life for the better? Do you think God’s forgiveness helps that process?
This well-written book draws young readers into Chase’s life as he begins asking himself questions about his past choices, his friendships, his family relationships and the goals he has in life. And as the protagonist decides who he wants his future self to be, readers are faced with those same thoughtful questions.
This is not a faith-focused book, but you certainly could read Restart through the lens of God’s redeeming grace and ask, Who would I be if I could start fresh?
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Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not necessarily their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
