The Child (ePub)

When Chris Williams enters his freshman year of college, he finds out what it means to be lonely. Like everyone, he wants to love and be loved. Unable to relate to the people around him, he looks for love in God and religious experience. If he is to make it through his first semester of college and ultimately life, he must rely on his faith and the visions he has of a child named Hannah, who loves him and shows him that God truly is love. Hannah, the spiritual form of a little girl with blonde hair, becomes his only friend. She's kind to him, talks to him, and keeps him from being lonely by appearing in visions that give him great joy and solace. But are these experiences a kind of sickness? And will he ever mature or forever remain a child?

Fully aware of his social problems, he wonders what the reality of the world will do to him and if he will be able to survive. He's twenty-four as he recounts his one semester in college, and although he is sustained by his visions of love, he sees himself ending up homeless. He feels he has to try to do something with his life, and because he was unsuccessful in college, he conceives of a greater purpose. His life will be dedicated to preaching a message of faith that he believes he's received from God, a teaching that has saved him from despair and that will bring happiness and peace and love to the world. The real question is whether or not he will finally succeed.