Theo of Golden

Golden is a fictitious city, yet its rhythms, sights, and civic rituals mirror scores of mid-sized Southern towns that have since been gentrified and now harbor creative, thriving tourist industries and communities of retirees and college students. The text repeatedly highlights markers of the region: antebellum oaks draped in pollen every spring, the courthouse square, and a pedestrian median called the Promenade, which functions like the “main streets” of towns such as Athens, Georgia, or Oxford, Mississippi. At the beginning of the novel, Theo’s first morning stroll past “cobblestone streets, the Iron Works, the old cotton warehouses” (13) is designed to compress 150 years of Southern economic history into a single panoramic sentence, emphasizing the historical significance of cotton, foundries, and rail lines. Similarly, the fictitious Golden University and its music school echo the real-world network of public flagships and small private universities that anchor culture and employment across the region. Even the Oxbow River is reminiscent of the Chattahoochee or the Savannah rivers: sinuous, economically strategic waterways that once carried cotton to the sea and now lure joggers and inspire art festivals.

Southern speech patterns undergird the setting. Theo is startled when strangers greet him on the sidewalk; the unhurried porch talk remains clichés grounded in genuine custom. Later, the narrative contrasts the trappings of traditional Southern courtesy with the darker legacies that lurk beneath the setting’s genial warmth, and a prime example of this dynamic occurs with Levi’s inclusion of the “Eye of God” (84): a well-known scar on an oak tree that bore witness to multiple lynchings of Black residents during earlier eras. In this way, Levi makes it clear that the seemingly idyllic town of Golden hides many layers; beneath the picturesque college town lie the remnants of a haunted Civil War outpost, and these facets of the community’s past continue to shape its present. By locating a cosmopolitan Portuguese patron amid dogwoods, faith-tinged idioms, and barbecue debates, Levi deliberately exploits the contrast between transatlantic sophistication and regional particularity, showing that small-town Southern life can still surprise outsiders while retaining its distinctive cadence and landscape.