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  • The One-In-A-Million Boy by Monica Wood book cover
  • The One-In-A-Million Boy by Monica Wood book cover
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The One-In-A-Million Boy

by Monica Wood

A friendship across generations

$17.09 USD
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Awards & Recognition

  • Award recognition

    Nautilus Award winner

    The source states that the book won the Nautilus Award.

AlbakiReads Editorial

A friendship across generations

Ona, 104, spends Saturday mornings with an 11-year-old boy assigned to help around her house. As he tends the bird feeders and garden shed, she shares memories and long-kept secrets from a life spanning first love and second chances. When the boy stops coming, his father takes over the visits, and his mother soon follows. Their connection brings Ona into the orbit of a family coping with loss. The novel links an elderly woman’s recollections with the changing relationships of a family, exploring how companionship can form across generations and how shared grief shapes a sense of belonging.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in intergenerational friendships and found family.
  • Readers drawn to fiction about memory, love, loss, and second chances.

Themes

Intergenerational friendshipFamily and belongingMemory and secretsLove, loss, and second chances

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Winner of the Nautilus Award and the New England Society Book Award, Monica Wood's The One-in-a-Million Boy is the incandescent story of a 104-year-old woman and the sweet, strange young boy assigned to help her around the house--a tale of intergenerational friendship that touches each member of the boy's unmoored family.

"The story of your life never starts at the beginning. Don't they teach you anything at school?"

So says 104-year-old Ona to the 11-year-old boy who's been sent to help her out every Saturday morning. As he refills the bird feeders and tidies the garden shed, Ona tells him about her long life, from first love to second chances. Soon she's confessing secrets she has kept hidden for decades.

One Saturday, the boy doesn't show up. Ona starts to think he's not so special after all, but then his father arrives on her doorstep, determined to finish his son's good deed. The boy's mother is not so far behind. Ona is set to discover that the world can surprise us at any age, and that in this story of found family, sometimes sharing a loss is the only way to find ourselves again.

"Readers won't be able to resist falling for Ona...The conclusion will leave them smiling through their tears."--Shelf Awareness

"Poignant...There is much to enjoy in this heartfelt tale of love, loss, and friendship."--Express

"A must-read book...Whimsical and bittersweet."--Good Housekeeping
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