This Book Is Magical
Every so often a book comes along that is so special that you can’t stop talking about it. A book that will forever have a place on your bookshelf and under no circumstances will you lend it to anyone. This book is one of those books for me. Perhaps you will (or did) love it as much as I loved it.
Theo Of Golden
One spring morning, a stranger named Theo arrives in the small Southern city of Golden. He doesn’t explain much about where he came from or why he’s there—but when he visits the local coffeehouse, where pencil portraits of the people of Golden hang on the walls, he begins purchasing them, one at a time, and giving each portrait to the person depicted. In exchange, he asks only for the person’s story. And so portrait by portrait, person by person, secrets are revealed, regrets are shared, and ordinary lives are profoundly altered.
A story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen, Theo of Golden is an unforgettable novel about the power of generosity, the importance of connection, and the quiet miracles that happen when we choose kindness and wonder.
About the Author
In 2023 he self-published Theo of Golden, about a mysterious older man who arrives in a small Georgia town, buys portraits off a coffeehouse wall and returns each one to its subject, asking only to hear their stories in return. Simon & Schuster picked it up last year, and it’s exploded into a New York Times bestseller. (It’s also one of AARP’s favorite books featuring older characters.)
The novel Theo of Golden might have never made it out of its author’s desk drawer had it not been for the author's friends. Allen Levi, a 69-year-old attorney-turned-singer-songwriter-turned-novelist from Hamilton, Georgia, wrote Golden in fits and starts over 3 1⁄2 years. He didn’t plan to publish it. When his friends pushed him to do so after they read the finished manuscript, his response was practical and a little defeated: “I’m almost 70. We’re really late in the game.”
Luckily for his readers, he changed his mind.
Allen Levi—attorney, judge, singer/songwriter, author—lives on and cares for family acreage near a small town in middle Georgia. Theo of Golden is his first novel.
