We begin with the odd “to the reader” note, that “since you’ll have every reason to distrust what follows—I still hardly believe half of it myself—let me confess, here at the outset, that I have taken certain liberties with the truth.” Names have been changed “to protect the innocent, yes, but also to protect myself, who am far from innocent.”
It's early in the twenty-first century, and Adrian Bennett, 50, divinity school associate professor at a “not particularly well-known university on Chicago’s South Side,” has two sons, Luca, 2, and Max, 5, and one day graduate student Paul Harkin, whom Adrian is mentoring, sees Luca, well, glow, “like flame you see on the underside of a broiler, something low and close.”
“The Nimbus: A Novel” ($29.99 in hardcover from Henry Holt and Co.; also for Amazon Kindle) gives it a name.
In the days to follow it will come and go. It can’t be photographed, and Adrian’s wife, Renata, 38, can’t see it. Not everyone can. This drives a further wedge into Adrian’s and Renata’s uneasy relationship (she’s given up her career for Adrian) and allows Baird to satirize academia’s obsession with the arcane--and Adrian’s ambition.
Enter 40-something Warren Kayita, librarian and ex-Div School student, from Uganda. He’s seen Luca’s nimbus and others who have begin to believe it fosters good luck. Indebted to a mobster-type who will forgive everything for another look at Luca, Warren plays a key role in a tragic encounter.
Baird raises, but does not answer, questions about the reality of the nimbus. “Every story starts with a lie,” he tells us. Does it end that way as well?
Bobby Baird is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, June 18 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, June 22 at 8:00 p.m. He’ll be speaking and signing books at Chico’s Barnes & Noble on Saturday, June 21 starting at noon. The public is invited.