The Nimbus: A Novel
A brilliant debut novel about a child whose literal enlightenment sets the stage for an exuberant tragicomedy of marriage, religion, and parenthood.

On an otherwise ordinary fall day on a university campus in Chicago, the toddler son of an ambitious divinity school professor named Adrian Bennett mysteriously starts to glow. The nimbus, as the strange, soft light comes to be known, offers no clues to its origin and frustrates every attempt at rational explanation.

Though the nimbus appears only intermittently, and not to everyone, the otherworldly glow quickly upends the lives of all those who encounter it, including Paul Harkin, Adrian’s broke and feckless graduate student, who likes being a graduate student a little too much for his own good; Renata Bennett, Adrian’s omnicompetent wife, who can’t see her son glowing even though the nimbus is turning her life upside down; and Warren Kayita, a down-on-his-luck librarian and aging divinity school alumnus on the run from a violent criminal. As news about the nimbus spreads around the university and beyond, Adrian, Paul, Renata, and Warren are set on a collision course that will threaten their lives and put their deepest convictions to the test.

At once a rollicking intellectual satire, a searing portrait of a family in crisis, and a thrilling metaphysical page-turner, The Nimbus offers a comic and profound examination of the persistence of spiritual belief in a secular age and humanity’s timeless search for meaning.

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The Nimbus: A Novel
A brilliant debut novel about a child whose literal enlightenment sets the stage for an exuberant tragicomedy of marriage, religion, and parenthood.

On an otherwise ordinary fall day on a university campus in Chicago, the toddler son of an ambitious divinity school professor named Adrian Bennett mysteriously starts to glow. The nimbus, as the strange, soft light comes to be known, offers no clues to its origin and frustrates every attempt at rational explanation.

Though the nimbus appears only intermittently, and not to everyone, the otherworldly glow quickly upends the lives of all those who encounter it, including Paul Harkin, Adrian’s broke and feckless graduate student, who likes being a graduate student a little too much for his own good; Renata Bennett, Adrian’s omnicompetent wife, who can’t see her son glowing even though the nimbus is turning her life upside down; and Warren Kayita, a down-on-his-luck librarian and aging divinity school alumnus on the run from a violent criminal. As news about the nimbus spreads around the university and beyond, Adrian, Paul, Renata, and Warren are set on a collision course that will threaten their lives and put their deepest convictions to the test.

At once a rollicking intellectual satire, a searing portrait of a family in crisis, and a thrilling metaphysical page-turner, The Nimbus offers a comic and profound examination of the persistence of spiritual belief in a secular age and humanity’s timeless search for meaning.

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The Nimbus: A Novel

The Nimbus: A Novel

by Robert P. Baird
The Nimbus: A Novel

The Nimbus: A Novel

by Robert P. Baird

Hardcover

$28.99 
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Overview

A brilliant debut novel about a child whose literal enlightenment sets the stage for an exuberant tragicomedy of marriage, religion, and parenthood.

On an otherwise ordinary fall day on a university campus in Chicago, the toddler son of an ambitious divinity school professor named Adrian Bennett mysteriously starts to glow. The nimbus, as the strange, soft light comes to be known, offers no clues to its origin and frustrates every attempt at rational explanation.

Though the nimbus appears only intermittently, and not to everyone, the otherworldly glow quickly upends the lives of all those who encounter it, including Paul Harkin, Adrian’s broke and feckless graduate student, who likes being a graduate student a little too much for his own good; Renata Bennett, Adrian’s omnicompetent wife, who can’t see her son glowing even though the nimbus is turning her life upside down; and Warren Kayita, a down-on-his-luck librarian and aging divinity school alumnus on the run from a violent criminal. As news about the nimbus spreads around the university and beyond, Adrian, Paul, Renata, and Warren are set on a collision course that will threaten their lives and put their deepest convictions to the test.

At once a rollicking intellectual satire, a searing portrait of a family in crisis, and a thrilling metaphysical page-turner, The Nimbus offers a comic and profound examination of the persistence of spiritual belief in a secular age and humanity’s timeless search for meaning.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250392657
Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 06/10/2025
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 140,636
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Robert P. Baird grew up in northern California, studied mechanical engineering and human biology at Stanford, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has worked as an editor at The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, and Esquire, and has written about poetry, politics, pandemics, treasure hunts, and wildfires for a variety of publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children.
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