04-07-2025
In ‘The Nimbus,' a glowing toddler challenges beliefs and a marriage
Robert P. Baird's debut novel, 'The Nimbus,' begins the way many origin stories do: with a sudden burst of light. One quiet afternoon on a university campus, a 2-year-old boy starts to glow. The person who first notices is not the boy's father — Adrian Bennett, a divinity professor who's just stepped out of his office — but a graduate student, 'that lowliest of human entities.' Paul Harkin is in the middle of cataloguing his adviser Adrian's files on an 'ordinary Thursday in mid-October' when he finds himself the witness of this miraculous sight. Despite being a scholar of faith, Paul can hardly believe his eyes. Only when Adrian returns and confirms that his son is indeed glowing do the two men wonder if they might be onto something: One person's perception of the inexplicable can be explained away as hallucination; it takes at least two to form the seeds of an organized religion.
