By Glenn Dromgoole

The number one book on the New York Times bestseller list is a novel, Theo of Golden by Allen Levi, his first novel.

Maybe you’ve read it. If you haven’t, I recommend it to you. It is one of the best books I’ve ever read.

It was self-published in 2023 and quietly started selling because it touched people’s hearts. After several thousand copies had been sold online, a major publisher picked it up, and it became a best-seller. The number one best-seller.

The book features a mysterious old man, Theo, who shows up in the fictional small town of Golden, Georgia. In a coffee shop, he sees a wall full of pencil portraits by a local artist. He begins buying them and connecting deeply, one by one, as he gives them to the people portrayed in the drawings. 

The author, a songwriter, lawyer, and former judge, said the idea for the book germinated from an actual coffee shop in Columbus, Georgia, which literally had 92 pencil portraits on the wall. Levi bought several of them and began thinking about what it would be like if someone tried to not only give the sketches back to the people portrayed but actually got to know and love them.

It’s a deeply spiritual book as it deals with what it means to truly live out a life of love.

“I cried a lot as I wrote the book,” Levi told Oprah Winfrey on her podcast last month. You can watch the podcast by Googling “Theo of Golden, Oprah Winfrey.”

You might also want to read an interview with Levi that ran in Christianity Today.

“I wanted to communicate hope,” Levi said. “I certainly wanted to communicate that Theo was a man who loved and … who expressed that in a winsome way through kindness and generosity. 

Theo is a man of deep faith. Some reviewers have criticized the book for being too Christian, others for not being Christian enough.

“I didn’t want the book to be so steeped in this man’s faith,” Levi said, “that it would run off readers who don’t share our faith perspective.”

In short, Theo the fictional character goes about doing good. And readers find themselves encouraged to go and do likewise.

Seems pretty Christian to me.

Glenn Dromgoole has a new website, MoreCivilityPlease.com