"In Monica Wood's The One-in-a-Million Boy, Ona is 104 when she first meets a boy who comes on Saturdays to work for her as part of a Boy Scout project. He fills her bird feeders and does odd jobs around her house. She is impressed that he always shows up and does what he says he's going to do. But then he disappears."
"Three weeks later, his father, Quinn, comes over to help finish the boy's job. He offers no explanation for the boy's absence. He has seven more weeks of work to do for Ona, which he does competently but distractedly at first. But Ona charms him with card tricks, animal cracker treats, and honesty; the two develop a relationship that fills a need neither have had the courage to face before."
"Quinn never tells Ona the boy has died; she learns through a newspaper story. The boy got up very early one morning, went on a bike ride, and his heart gave out because of long QT syndrome. But the boy, who is never named, remains ever present in this beguiling story of belonging; of memories lost then regained; and of people picking up the broken pieces of their lives and gluing them together with one another into a messy but marvelous collage."
Ona, age 104, hires an 11-year-old Boy Scout who performs errands, fills bird feeders, and reliably arrives every Saturday. The boy is small, anxious, and obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records; his mother, Belle, regards him as one-in-a-million. After the boy disappears and later dies of long QT syndrome, his father Quinn completes the remaining weeks of work for Ona without initially revealing the death. Quinn and Ona form a hesitant bond through shared routines and simple pleasures, and Quinn learns to confront adulthood, grief, and the possibility of love as community pieces are gathered into a fragile, healing whole.
Read at Psychology Today
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