The Ultimate Gift (2000) by Jim Stovall is an inspirational self-help novel about a young man who can receive his inheritance only when he completes 12 tasks that teach him the important values of life. The book, illustrated by Elise Peterson, became a bestseller and spawned two sequels. All three works have been adapted for film. Author Stovall lost his sight to a degenerative disease in his late 20s. A champion weightlifter, he cofounded the Narrative Television Network, a descriptive-video service for those with blindness or visual impairment. The effort won him several awards, including an Emmy. Stovall has written more than a dozen books; he also delivers inspirational speeches around the US. He believes that, in modern times with technology, one can adapt to blindness, albeit with considerable difficulties, but that loss of one’s life vision is very troubling. He is active in the Christian community, and this novel is heavily influenced by Christian ideology. Stovall wrote two sequels to The Ultimate Gift: The Ultimate Life (2007) and The Ultimate Legacy (2009). All three are available as film adaptations.

The 2019 version of the 2011 eBook edition forms the basis for this study guide.

Content Warning: This book sometimes engages in ableist and stereotypical views of disability, particularly blindness. It sometimes trivializes these disabilities. The book contains depictions of foster homes and may engage in stereotypical ideas of adoptive families. It contains references to death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Oil magnate Red Stevens dies and leaves his billions to relatives. Red’s lawyer and friend Theodore Hamilton read the will, which leaves huge chunks of Red’s estate to obviously greedy family members, but the will stipulates they mustn’t try to manage or control the companies or investments, lest they trigger a clause that transfers ownership to a charity.

Red’s grand-nephew, surly Jason Stevens, gets an unusual bequest: He’s to meet monthly with Hamilton and his associate, Margaret Hastings, where he’ll receive, via videotapes recorded by Red, assignments to complete. If he finishes all 12 quests, he’ll receive an unnamed inheritance; otherwise, he gets nothing. Jason is angry he didn’t collect millions of dollars, but grudgingly, he agrees.

Jason’s first task is to labor at a ranch. Hamilton and Hastings fly with him to Gus Caldwell’s Texas cattle ranch, where Jason spends a month digging post holes and constructing a fence. At month’s end, Jason seems happy with his work.

His next job is to hand out cash, provided by Red and totaling $1,500, to worthy recipients. Jason donates money to a Boy Scout troop that washes cars to afford a trip to a jamboree. He helps a young mother who’s behind on her car payments so she can keep driving to her job. He donates to a family whose father lost his job, and they buy Christmas gifts for the children. An elderly lady weeps because she can’t afford her husband’s heart medicine; Jason buys them three months’ worth. A young man’s car breaks down; Jason spends $700 to fix the vehicle so the man can keep driving to school and work. The total payout is $1,800; Jason admits he pitched in a few hundred dollars of his own.

Jason sometimes reverts to his older, selfish ways, but in the third month, he learns about the selfless love of true friendship. He completes his task, to find an example of real friendship, with a story Gus told him about misbranding cattle on behalf of his new friend and neighbor, Red, then discovering that Red had done the same for him.

The fourth task involves a trip to South America, where Jason works as an assistant at a tiny library donated by Red to a town deep in the jungle. He finds that people will walk for miles just to read a book and that their hunger for knowledge fuels their education. This, he learns, is the key to lifelong learning.

Red next asks Jason to find one person in each age group—child, young adult, mature adult, elderly—who faces a daunting problem. Jason is to glean the lesson from each situation. He meets a child with a terminal disease who loves and charms everyone and who takes simple joy in playing at the park. He encounters a man who, with his wife, was laid off and whose entire family finds odd jobs to support each other. The man washes Jason’s car, refuses a tip, and says he feels like the luckiest man alive. Jason witnesses a huge funeral procession and talks to the elderly widower, whose beloved wife, a popular teacher of 40 years, inspired hundreds of her ex-students to say their goodbyes. The young adult Jason finds is himself: He never understood that problems are the true source of joy.

Jason’s next task is to be houseparent to three-dozen youths who live in the Maine woods at the Red Stevens Home for Boys. During his visit, Jason works alongside Nathan, a professional football player who grew up at the Home and who returns regularly to serve at a place that, for him—and now for Jason as well—has become his real family.

To learn how to take himself less seriously, Jason meets a man with blindness who loves to joke about his predicament. His humor eases the burden of the challenges he faces, and teaches Jason that, in the book’s view, even the worst problems contain within them sources of levity.

Red tells Jason that our dreams of the future make our lives worthwhile. Jason thinks about his own dreams and realizes he wants to help other young people learn the life skills Red is teaching him.

Told to draw up a list of 10 things he’s grateful for, Jason includes his health, youth, beautiful home, friends, education, travel, wonderful car, his families old and new, Red’s generous financing, and the year-long challenge itself.

Jason’s 11th task is to describe what he would do if he could plan his last day of life. Jason decides he would spend most of it with friends and family so he could express his appreciation for them. He learns every day can be just as meaningful if he’s willing to make it so.

In the final month, Jason ponders how every task he undertook points to a single gift, that of love. He learns love undergirds every truly good thing in life and that people go down wrong paths if they lack love.

Jason now knows Red conferred on him the ultimate gift of love for others and for life. He is eager to get started on a career of helping others, but Hamilton and Hastings hold him back long enough to announce that Red’s estate appoints Jason as controller of a billion-dollar charitable fund. Surprised and delighted, Jason says this will help him spread the word about the ultimate gift.