After his mother is killed in a freak bombing incident at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13-year-old Theodore Decker’s life is turned upside down. In the panic that ensues at that fateful event, he steals ‘The Goldfinch’, a pricelss painting housed at the museum. As he deals with the loss of his mother, Decker is pulled into a life of crime and crosses paths with a variety of people, each connected in some way to the painting.