I was given Allen Levi’s novel Theo of Golden for my birthday last month. When I first looked at it, I noticed that it was not published by any “name” publishing house. There was no plot teaser on the dustjacket flap, nor any author biography. As a matter of fact, it seems that this is a self-published novel. And yet, it is one of the most moving and rewarding books I’ve ever read. It is being sold and enjoyed by readers through word of mouth, which I find very encouraging.

Theo of Golden opens with an old, yet active and fit, man who shows up in the small southern city of Golden, which is somewhere in Georgia. This man, the Theo of the title, spends his first morning in Golden taking his time enjoying the picturesque main street of the town – the beautiful tree-lined median, the fountains, the nineteenth-century storefronts, and the river nearby.

Theo is from Portugal, and he has a place in New York City from which he has recently arrived. He doesn’t seem to have any problems with money, and he is very kind. When he enters a coffee shop, The Chalice, he notices dozens of beautiful and striking pencil portraits of local people. They are for sale, and the name of each subject is on the back of the portraits. He decides to buy them and give them to the subjects. He carefully chooses his first portrait, which is of a young woman whose “unsmiling but not unfriendly face” interests him. He finds out what her address is and writes her a polite letter, offering her her portrait if she will meet him near a fountain on the main street.

The woman, Minette Prentiss, accepts his invitation, but not without some apprehension from her and her husband. When she and Theo meet, they have a very nice conversation, and before she knows it, she has shared details of her life that have been troubling her for years. It also turns out that Minette is the niece of the artist who drew all of the portraits, Asher Glissen.

And so begins a very mysterious tale. Levi drops hints from the beginning that Theo has some sort of connection to Golden, and a plan behind his generosity. He soon finds an apartment above the office of James Ponder, who is one of the town’s most respected citizens. He is a “consultant” who advises people. He is the soul of discretion, and when he vouches for Theo, people’s natural suspicions are allayed. He also mentions to his secretary that Theo’s father was a client of his many years ago.

When Theo has an opportunity to give a portrait to the custodian of the local university, he discovers that the man, Kendrick Whitaker, has a young daughter who was injured in a car accident and is not receiving very good care in the hospital. Theo arranges it so that he can anonymously pay for the best orthopedic surgeon to work on her leg.

When Theo meets with Asher Glissen, they have a very interesting conversation about what makes art “good”:

Asher looked at the old man. “Theo, I get the impression you’ve thought about this before. What do you think makes for good art?”

Theo rested his chin on his right thumb and placed a bent index finger over his bottom lip.

“Yes, I have thought about it. In fact, I’ve thought about it a great deal. And I’ve asked others about it. But I don’t know if I have an answer either. Other than this. It might not make a lot of sense, but for anything to be good, truly good, there must be love in it. I’m not even sure I know fully what that means, but the older I get, the more I believe it. There must be love for the gift itself, love for the subject being depicted or the story being told, and love for the audience. Whether the art is sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music, or raising a child, if love is not in it – at the very heart of it – it might be skillful, marketable, or popular, but I doubt it is truly good. Nothing is what it’s supposed to be if love is not at the core.”
(pages 128-129)

As the story progresses, Theo makes more “bestowals” of portraits to unsuspecting residents of Golden, and his friendships with some of them deepen. Tony, a Vietnam veteran who runs the local bookstore, becomes a particularly close friend. Ellen, an emotionally troubled homeless woman, is another. Person by person, Theo collects and nurtures a group of people, each of whom he insists is capable of “saintliness,” whether they believe it or not.

The novel is composed of 62 brief chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter is a self-contained vignette with little connection to the others, until, very gradually, some threads are picked up and woven into a larger narrative. Levi drops subtle nods to Scripture throughout – never in a preachy way – that are as natural to the flow of the story as the Oxbow River that flows through Golden.

Levi also has a way of painting with words. On practically every page is a beautiful description of a scene that is described in a “painterly” way:

The radiance of the evening sun through stained glass dappled the sanctuary. The slow movement of color would have been undetectable from minute to minute, but over the course of the hour, patches of red, lavender, melon, gold, and emerald shifted kaleidoscopically across the room. The sun was a brush; the west window its palette; the floor, walls, ceiling, and congregants its canvas; an angel somewhere, the artist. (page 365)

Golden is an Eden in which Theo is able to gently work his generosity, but like the Biblical Eden, there are unsettling elements. Asher’s brother, Pearce, who is also Minette’s father, is a businessman who is consumed with accumulating money and property. He is unable to put down his phone and simply enjoy the moment. To reveal any more is to spoil the story, but suffice it to say that love does triumph, in a very surprising way.

Theo of Golden is one of the most tender and satisfying stories I’ve ever read, and I don’t usually go for that kind of tale. However, Levi avoids any saccharine sentimentality, with his spare prose and his masterful depictions of a small southern town as it lives through the seasons of one year. This is one book that deserves all of the praise it is getting, and I hope Levi graces us with another one soon.