This is an extraordinary book. The author, with meticulous attention to detail, traces the historical and spiritual journey of one of Charles Darwin’s most fervent admirers, George Romanes. But it is Romanes’s movement from unbelief to faith in the context of Darwin’s death that is, perhaps, of most significance in a post-Darwinian world plagued by skepticism about whether belief in God is ever possible. … Woven into this account Pleins puts in a number of interesting details, including a reconstruction of Darwin’s house, the reading material that likely influenced Romanes, as well as specific struggles of more general importance. … Overall, the impression one has from reading this book is that Romanes was a conflicted and complicated man, racked by an obsessive attachment to Darwin, whose death left a void that he sought to fill through many and various religious alternatives.
