Tag: Riverwalk

I’ve recommended Theo of Golden to everyone I know, with this sense of urgency: stop whatever you’re doing and read this book.

So when my sister-in-law had turned the last page and both scolded me for not revealing the impact the book would have (I won’t give specific spoilers) and in the next breath thanked me for recommending it, she was eager to visit the coffee shop and see the portraits that became the inspiration for the book. Fountain City Coffee is an hour from our family farm in rural Georgia, so we made plans to take our husbands (who are brothers) and go to the coffee shop on Sunday, February 15. Though we’ve been to or through Columbus, Georgia on many occasions (my own brother was born there), we wanted to see it through the lens of this amazing book – the art on the walls of the coffee shop, the Riverwalk and adjacent bike shop where Theo and Ellen go for a ride and talk about the bird nest on the bank, and the little bookstore.

It was a stroke of magnificent timing that my writing friend Sally Donnelly of Arlington, Virginia sent me the link to Katie Couric’s interview with Allen Levi, the author of Theo of Golden in the comments on her blog post. I’d hoped to watch it but had an event with my in-person book club in my home that evening and couldn’t watch the live interview. Sally knows what a fan I am, and it was simply the best Valentine ever to watch that interview. I’d hug her if she were here!

I’ll be taking plenty of photos and maybe even doing a few recorded clips as well, and I’ll plan to blog about this experience on Tuesday morning. As I write, the rain is pelting down in heavy waves on this 48-degree morning here in rural Georgia, so I hope it has blown over by the time we make our jaunt west to the state line that divides Georgia and Alabama. If you’re having the same weather we are having, it’s a great day to run by the bookstore on the way home from church and grab a copy of this book and then sink down into a chair by the fireplace and devour it!