They are fourteen and twelve.

He whispers. He can’t always find the words. And the things he feels most deeply — he says to locked doors, to animals. To the dark.

But never to the person who needs to hear them.

She sees everything. Hears everything. Especially the things he thinks he’s hidden.

But she gets it all wrong.

A backyard on the California coast. A ship with scarlet sails. Two children who found each other before they had words for what they’d found.

You will watch them reach for something — again and again — and you will see, in a way they cannot, exactly how close they are. You will know.

They won’t.

The world is enormous.

You have felt this before.

Not in a book.

In your own life.

That helplessness — knowing what you want, working for it, sacrificing for it, maybe even touching it — then watching it snatched away.

This book will do that to you.

Repeatedly.

With the cold-heartedness of an indifferent world.

To love so deeply, it hurts to breathe. To trust so completely, you feel as one.

Mary Jane Wells
Actress & Narrator

Mary Jane Wells is not simply a narrator. She is a trained stage actress — trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama — with a career spanning film, television, theatre, and voiceover. She is the recipient of three Audie Awards, the audiobook equivalent of an Oscar. She has matched voices with Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, and Nicole Kidman in post-production. She appeared in How to Train Your Dragon 2 alongside Cate Blanchett and Gerard Butler.

This is what she said.

“One True Love is a must for all fans of American literature and beautifully crafted romance. It has the charm, hilarity, and playfulness of young love, elegantly counterpointed with the bruising reality of the adult world. It has put a spell on my heart. I feel very grateful to be entrusted with what I feel is a profound amalgam of created fiction and personal testimony, a world spun around deeply personal true events to create something that stands alone and alongside those events. To be able to create something so transformative is one feat, but to create poetry from it is evidence to me of a blazing talent that cannot be ignored. It was an honour to narrate this, and I hope I did it justice.”

“Your book is clear, elegant, and beautiful. It’s written so well, and it’s so touching. Some audiobooks are not like this, so it’s a pleasure to work on one that is. I’m loving my experience of narrating your story. It’s such a tender account of boyhood and vulnerability and loss. Reminds me at times of Stand by Me. It evokes this era of America that is so classical whilst making it so personal. I’m bawling as I narrate some of this! Danny! What a sweet hero. Heartbreaking!! I don’t always get to work on good writing … this time it nearly killed me.” — Mary Jane Wells, three-time Audie Award winner, actress and audiobook narrator, over 150 titles