A parable for our time
Review of "Theo of Golden" by Allen Levi.
The of Golden
Allen Levi
Simon & Schuster
2025.
Imagine a coffee shop in a small American town, its walls adorned with ninety portraits of town residents rendered by a local artist. Then, a mysterious stranger moves into town and buys the paintings one by one and gives them to the persons portrayed.
This is the plot of Theo of Golden, a book self-published by Allen Levi in 2023 that sold so successfully by word-of-mouth, a major publisher picked it up in 2025. It quickly became a New York Times and Amazon Books best-seller. Readers became polarized on it, either loving it or hating it.
Theo shows up in Golden, Georgia, mysteriously declining to divulge his surname, and becomes a coffee shop regular. (Deeper levels of these details are revealed only at the novel’s end.)
Mesmerized by the portraits and dismayed that they remain unsold, he purchases one or two a week to gift to each portrait subject. He mails a note to the intended recipient, inviting each one to meet him on a bench in the center of town for a presentation ritual.
While bestowing each painting, Theo describes with grace and kindness what he sees in the portrayed face. His presentations disarm the conversation partners, who are usually suspicious and guarded at first. As they come to trust him, they open up about their life stories. The conversation is a spiritual discipline that shares the rich gift of “being known.”
One will not appreciate this by reading Theo of Golden as a “regular novel.” Theo is “too good” and the plot line is not plausible; the novel, read thus, feels schmaltzy and saccharine. But as a parable it is a masterpiece. The title instructs us how to view the book. Theo (Greek for “God”) is a Christ figure, and the town of Golden anticipates the New Jerusalem, the city of “pure gold” (Rev. 21:18). This mysterious man calls new creation into being through each of his bench conversations.
Each one unique
Levi provides a colourful cast of portrait recipients: Minnette, whose parents split up when she was young and who was then raised by grandparents; Kendrick, a night-shift janitor whose young daughter is recovering from a serious accident; and homeless Ellen whose most cherished possession is her bicycle.
In a lovely conversation with Christianity Today editor Russell Moore, Levi emphasized the centrality of honouring the image of God in everyone we encounter as an antidote to today’s pervasive cynicism.
As the novel progresses, two patterns emerge. First, each recipient is ennobled through the conversation, and becomes sturdier, more fully alive and more vibrant in a manner similar to the children entering New Creation at the end of C. S. Lewis’ final Narnia book, The Last Battle.
Theo says to Kendrick, “When I first looked at your picture, I thought, ‘This is a strong man.’ I could see worry and some hurt in your eyes, but still . . . there is kindness. . . . And now I know it is the face of a good father . . . I’m honored to meet you.” Those words reveal the second pattern: ennobling is deepened through suffering and sadness.
Theo reflects on this ennobling in conversation with the portrait artist: “In every face I detect sadness. It is like a weariness or an unmet longing or a disappointment. To these old eyes, it is in every face, the universal affliction. It is what gives gravitas to your portraits and makes them so believable. . . . And there is the beautiful possibility that great love can grow out of sadness if it is well-tended. Sadness can make us bitter or wise. We get to choose.”
In a season when some public Christians value harshness and condemnation, this gentle parable and its unusual plot suggests what the Spirit of Jesus might look like in daily life today and how the Spirit reminds us that the Kingdom is among us.
