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My Only Story: A Novel
He came to me first in a dream, as a crippled dog angling down a country lane, puzzled by his sudden age, his bum paw, the dry stick clamped between his teeth. I’d been expecting this dream for a very long time, and I woke up moving. . . .
Rita Rosario has a gift, a way with people. She listens to them and really sees them for who they are–warts and all. And sometimes, she even knows how to guide them toward a new beginning. Women, even men, come to Rita’s beauty shop for perms, town gossip, and the makeovers of their very lives.
John Reed first appears to Rita in one of her dreams. When they meet at a town gathering a few days later, she immediately offers him a haircut, and her heart. As they share their stories, Rita senses she can help John fill a void by reconnecting him to his only family–a young niece he nearly lost in a heartbreaking tragedy. While inspiring John on a journey out of loneliness and into reconciliation, Rita begins to come to terms with events in her past . . . and discovers things about herself she never realized, including her own intimate role in John’s unfolding story.
Rita Rosario has a gift, a way with people. She listens to them and really sees them for who they are–warts and all. And sometimes, she even knows how to guide them toward a new beginning. Women, even men, come to Rita’s beauty shop for perms, town gossip, and the makeovers of their very lives.
John Reed first appears to Rita in one of her dreams. When they meet at a town gathering a few days later, she immediately offers him a haircut, and her heart. As they share their stories, Rita senses she can help John fill a void by reconnecting him to his only family–a young niece he nearly lost in a heartbreaking tragedy. While inspiring John on a journey out of loneliness and into reconciliation, Rita begins to come to terms with events in her past . . . and discovers things about herself she never realized, including her own intimate role in John’s unfolding story.
293 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
16 people are currently reading
540 people want to read
About the author
Monica Wood
24 books1,334 followersMonica Wood is the author of four works of fiction, most recently The One-in-a-Million-Boy, which won a 2017 Nautilus Award (Gold) and the 2017 fiction prize from the New England Society in the City of New York. She also is the author of Any Bitter Thing which spent 21 weeks on the American Booksellers Association extended bestseller list and was named a Book Sense Top Ten pick. Her other fiction includes Ernie’s Ark and My Only Story, a finalist for the Kate Chopin Award.
Monica is also the author of When We Were the Kennedys, a memoir of her growing up in Mexico, Maine. The book won the Maine Literary Award for Memoir in 2013, and the Sarton Women's Literary Awards for Memoir in 2012.
Monica is also the author of When We Were the Kennedys, a memoir of her growing up in Mexico, Maine. The book won the Maine Literary Award for Memoir in 2013, and the Sarton Women's Literary Awards for Memoir in 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
August 11, 2016
I must confess that I just finished reading "My Only Story" for the second time. Why does it strike a chord with me? Is it because it's about the complicated relationship sisters have? (I'm the oldest of four sisters) Is it because I love the narrator/protagonist Rita and wish I could meet her? (Yes) Is it because Monica Wood is the writer I strive to be--poetic, succinct, humorous, natural, and filled with heart? You bet! And also because she tells a great story. I'm glad it's not "her only story" :-)
Rita wants to help people, heal them, and she's good at it. Little does she know, she needs a healing makeover herself. She's in a rut: divorced, yearning for a child, and fighting a fight she can't win to save her town. When she thinks she's found happiness and purpose after dreaming of a crippled dog she needs to help, she learns she's only half-way there. Fixing other people isn't enough, you still have to fix yourself, and forgiveness goes a long way. Life is a glorious trip!
Rita wants to help people, heal them, and she's good at it. Little does she know, she needs a healing makeover herself. She's in a rut: divorced, yearning for a child, and fighting a fight she can't win to save her town. When she thinks she's found happiness and purpose after dreaming of a crippled dog she needs to help, she learns she's only half-way there. Fixing other people isn't enough, you still have to fix yourself, and forgiveness goes a long way. Life is a glorious trip!
May 25, 2016
She did it again, dragged me into this story so fast. Even when I began to realize where she was taking me, I couldn't put it down. We should all have someone in our life like this main character, Rita. So vibrant and sad at the same time. This story definitely had some twists in the weave of characters and, again, she does her characters so well that you feel like you are there. I guess that is my definition of a good book..you feel you are there.
February 12, 2025
No one tells a better story about the complications of family life than Monica Wood. Her characters are so alive that they nearly jump off the pages. As usual, her writing is exceptional.
I even dragged out my Tarot cards to follow all the prophecies!! LOL
Thanks Emily for introducing me to this wonderful author.
I even dragged out my Tarot cards to follow all the prophecies!! LOL
Thanks Emily for introducing me to this wonderful author.
January 9, 2017
"You can't keep hold of the future and the past at the same time... You let go of one or the other"
I can't understand how other reviewers see this as a story of Rita and her mistakes. Yes, it's about sisters, and families and love, and trying to make something of your life, and learning you can't control everything, but really so much more.
This is a five star book. Do you see what I mean? I disliked it at the beginning, but as I began to know and understand Rita, I warmed to it.By the end, this book deserved five stars, and most of all I wanted to remember Rita's thoughts.
I can't understand how other reviewers see this as a story of Rita and her mistakes. Yes, it's about sisters, and families and love, and trying to make something of your life, and learning you can't control everything, but really so much more.
This is a five star book. Do you see what I mean? I disliked it at the beginning, but as I began to know and understand Rita, I warmed to it.By the end, this book deserved five stars, and most of all I wanted to remember Rita's thoughts.
June 9, 2025
I really enjoy reading Monica Wood. My Only Story is twenty five years old and her second novel. It is fascinating and encouraging to see her clear growth as a writer. The lead character, Rita was somewhat annoying as she pushed her strong will into situations without thinking of others' realities and responses. I was also annoyed when she consistently put her own thoughts and feelings into others' motives, behaviors, and outcomes. She made significant decisions based on her projected story, her fantasies vs the others' realities. She was very intrusive and off-putting. There was a Disneyesque fancy in the ending and the outcome. I appreciate Wood's dedication to writing and clearly growing as a writer. For me, as a writer, it is very encouraging.
July 3, 2017
I see some of the same things I liked in Wood's One-In-A-Million Boy in this book's treatment of the human need to connect in all of its messy imperfection.
The novel's central character Rita wants a home, and a family. She is preoccupied with the baby she lost - a baby that never existed but that she and her then-husband planned to adopt from an unscrupulous surrogate. Living and working as a hairdresser in a house that is the only building on her street that remains a home, she uses her grandmother's tarot cards to "read" people. Claiming as she shows her hair salon to gentleman-caller John Reed, that she is not a hairdresser, "I'm a healer"; she emboldens him to try to connect to his young niece and negotiates entree. Ultimately though she is the one left alone.
I liked Rita, her too-muchness, her desire for connection and her willingness to keep trying.
As a book, I do quibble with the narrative arc. Darla came out of nowhere and changed the trajectory of the story in a way that seemed artificial and capricious. Did Rita choose to give Darla the chance to give Rita something? Did Rita choose to give Aileen the father and mother she wanted?Did Rita just make a poor choice?
The novel's central character Rita wants a home, and a family. She is preoccupied with the baby she lost - a baby that never existed but that she and her then-husband planned to adopt from an unscrupulous surrogate. Living and working as a hairdresser in a house that is the only building on her street that remains a home, she uses her grandmother's tarot cards to "read" people. Claiming as she shows her hair salon to gentleman-caller John Reed, that she is not a hairdresser, "I'm a healer"; she emboldens him to try to connect to his young niece and negotiates entree. Ultimately though she is the one left alone.
I liked Rita, her too-muchness, her desire for connection and her willingness to keep trying.
As a book, I do quibble with the narrative arc. Darla came out of nowhere and changed the trajectory of the story in a way that seemed artificial and capricious. Did Rita choose to give Darla the chance to give Rita something? Did Rita choose to give Aileen the father and mother she wanted?Did Rita just make a poor choice?
January 31, 2016
My Only Story snuck up on me. It was slow starting, and I thought I was disappointed in it. Not to mention how much it appeared to be a straightforward love story.
But I should have known. Monica Wood is much more complex than that, and by the last page, I was only sorry there weren't another hundred pages.
But I should have known. Monica Wood is much more complex than that, and by the last page, I was only sorry there weren't another hundred pages.
September 25, 2024
“You can map whole lives by what people choose to forget.”
My Only Story was not the book I planned to read, but I picked it up and by the third paragraph I was hooked. “And yet he seemed old, the way all sad people do.” This about John Reed, who enters the life of Rita Rosario, a hairdresser who collects stories like she does hair from her customers and stores samples in a jar. Rita reads the Tarot, was considered to have spatial perception in high school, and has skeptical powers of observation, derived partly from life with a difficult family and Darla, her wild child sister now part of a religious cult, inevitably in California.
Rita recalls a bitter time when she bought the services of a surrogate to have children. She was scammed. But always a believer, Rita draws closer to John Reed, a recovering alcoholic and bar room piano player whose terrible pain draws her into his life.
Rita redeems John. He is, she says, a man inside his own story. A horrible act by his brother severed any contact between John and Aileen, his niece. The girl’s family build an emotional fort around her. Rita helps him re-connect to her by stealth and coaxing. It’s a formidable task at first:
“The twin sisters and their husbands sucked in all their breath and moved
with the poise and menace of a nuclear missile still in the silo.
We’re doing this for her, is what they said through their narrow mouths,
Their squared-off shoulders. It’s for her sweet sake. The sisters brushed
their eyes over me the way Vicky used to, lingering over my fingernails,
my bangle bracelets, my blue shoes, and I suddenly felt like one of those
gum-popping, beehived hairdressers the filmmakers are so fond of depicting,
Some draggletail in spike heels from the wrong side of the tracks. I’ve read
The Canterbury Tales, I wanted to tell them. I’m an informed voter.”
Rita finds a way to break this wall through Beth, a possible Cordelia to the Goneril
and Regan her two sisters present. Rita sees Beth as the kind of woman whose
secrets took up a room.
Rita’s reconciliation skills, which I first discovered in her Ernie’s Ark, lead to a truly beautiful ending, but what makes My Only Story a classic read is how her character and locale is presented in Wood’s dynamic, addictive prose. Rita dwells in duality. She is caught between being a future spouse, a mother for Aileen, or fairy godmother who solves all issues. She lives in her hometown, now plowed under by corporate and financial interlopers. Her town once knew spaghetti. Now it’s called pasta. It had a string of factories. With the empty factories come a string of psychiatrists for the new residents. She is in an endless legal battle to keep her house, and resents her world being re-made, recalling a less mendacious town of smaller grace. Wood not only tells Rita’s family origins, but the woman’s working class sensibilities in a well-crafted New England setting.
Duality is a part of her life. As she explains to an eight-year-old Aileen,
who begins to recall the tragedy of her infancy, “Remembering is not always so easy, though.
You tend to recall things in pieces. You remember this one as bad, that one as good…all I’m saying is, people are more than just one thing.”
Rita sees the sisters protecting Aileen as walling her up, and Aileen sees her aunts
As boxes. She goes from one to another. John becomes the hope to change this, as he has done with
Rita’s life, but Wood offers a sudden, lyrical break when Rita bails Darla out of her commune and
brings her home. This has exhilarating and potentially disastrous consequences for Rita’s hard-worn victory with John, wiping out the Hallmark-like ending from a happy one into a human one.
My Only Story is entertaining, funny, wry, loaded with quips and observations leading to an almost beneficent unpredictability. I can’t say enough good things. I could not put this book down, and can’t wait for Rita to do my hair.
My Only Story was not the book I planned to read, but I picked it up and by the third paragraph I was hooked. “And yet he seemed old, the way all sad people do.” This about John Reed, who enters the life of Rita Rosario, a hairdresser who collects stories like she does hair from her customers and stores samples in a jar. Rita reads the Tarot, was considered to have spatial perception in high school, and has skeptical powers of observation, derived partly from life with a difficult family and Darla, her wild child sister now part of a religious cult, inevitably in California.
Rita recalls a bitter time when she bought the services of a surrogate to have children. She was scammed. But always a believer, Rita draws closer to John Reed, a recovering alcoholic and bar room piano player whose terrible pain draws her into his life.
Rita redeems John. He is, she says, a man inside his own story. A horrible act by his brother severed any contact between John and Aileen, his niece. The girl’s family build an emotional fort around her. Rita helps him re-connect to her by stealth and coaxing. It’s a formidable task at first:
“The twin sisters and their husbands sucked in all their breath and moved
with the poise and menace of a nuclear missile still in the silo.
We’re doing this for her, is what they said through their narrow mouths,
Their squared-off shoulders. It’s for her sweet sake. The sisters brushed
their eyes over me the way Vicky used to, lingering over my fingernails,
my bangle bracelets, my blue shoes, and I suddenly felt like one of those
gum-popping, beehived hairdressers the filmmakers are so fond of depicting,
Some draggletail in spike heels from the wrong side of the tracks. I’ve read
The Canterbury Tales, I wanted to tell them. I’m an informed voter.”
Rita finds a way to break this wall through Beth, a possible Cordelia to the Goneril
and Regan her two sisters present. Rita sees Beth as the kind of woman whose
secrets took up a room.
Rita’s reconciliation skills, which I first discovered in her Ernie’s Ark, lead to a truly beautiful ending, but what makes My Only Story a classic read is how her character and locale is presented in Wood’s dynamic, addictive prose. Rita dwells in duality. She is caught between being a future spouse, a mother for Aileen, or fairy godmother who solves all issues. She lives in her hometown, now plowed under by corporate and financial interlopers. Her town once knew spaghetti. Now it’s called pasta. It had a string of factories. With the empty factories come a string of psychiatrists for the new residents. She is in an endless legal battle to keep her house, and resents her world being re-made, recalling a less mendacious town of smaller grace. Wood not only tells Rita’s family origins, but the woman’s working class sensibilities in a well-crafted New England setting.
Duality is a part of her life. As she explains to an eight-year-old Aileen,
who begins to recall the tragedy of her infancy, “Remembering is not always so easy, though.
You tend to recall things in pieces. You remember this one as bad, that one as good…all I’m saying is, people are more than just one thing.”
Rita sees the sisters protecting Aileen as walling her up, and Aileen sees her aunts
As boxes. She goes from one to another. John becomes the hope to change this, as he has done with
Rita’s life, but Wood offers a sudden, lyrical break when Rita bails Darla out of her commune and
brings her home. This has exhilarating and potentially disastrous consequences for Rita’s hard-worn victory with John, wiping out the Hallmark-like ending from a happy one into a human one.
My Only Story is entertaining, funny, wry, loaded with quips and observations leading to an almost beneficent unpredictability. I can’t say enough good things. I could not put this book down, and can’t wait for Rita to do my hair.
November 15, 2025
Rita is a very interesting female character leading this story. She has a sister, Darla, and this sister is away for most of the book until she contacts Rita for help. The story is about a healer in the way of Rita, thinking she is one with her tarot cards, her services, and her decisions to help people.
Her life is about her wish to be a mother. She has a loser husband, but she wants a child with him. They decide to use a surrogate. However, this turns into a big mistake. Rita decides her marriage is over. She wants to start over on her own. Rita moves on. She establishes her own business in her basement, where she does readings with her customers. This is between doing their hair.
She meets John after having a dream about a dog. Rita decides she is meant to help John. This is where the story takes off. Her mission is to get John back in his niece's life. This leads Rita to talk to Beth. Beth is the girl's caretaker after her mom and father have passed away. The girl's father was John's brother. John misses this eight-year-old girl. He wants to be a part of her life again after years of separation. Rita acts as a go-between for John in the beginning, until her sister calls her for help. Darla is in terrible shape when Rita finds her. It takes a long time for Darla to be released from the hospital. During this period, Beth and John become close, even though John is engaged to Rita.
As the story unfolds, John's true feelings are revealed, and Rita decides to cut ties with him. Her dream of becoming a mother did not come true. She has her sister back in her life. Rita is still looking for true love. John has moved on. The child, the girl, is the one who gets her dream answered. She gains a father. The red-haired girl with the dark blue eyes gets what she stated to Rita once in her room.
Her life is about her wish to be a mother. She has a loser husband, but she wants a child with him. They decide to use a surrogate. However, this turns into a big mistake. Rita decides her marriage is over. She wants to start over on her own. Rita moves on. She establishes her own business in her basement, where she does readings with her customers. This is between doing their hair.
She meets John after having a dream about a dog. Rita decides she is meant to help John. This is where the story takes off. Her mission is to get John back in his niece's life. This leads Rita to talk to Beth. Beth is the girl's caretaker after her mom and father have passed away. The girl's father was John's brother. John misses this eight-year-old girl. He wants to be a part of her life again after years of separation. Rita acts as a go-between for John in the beginning, until her sister calls her for help. Darla is in terrible shape when Rita finds her. It takes a long time for Darla to be released from the hospital. During this period, Beth and John become close, even though John is engaged to Rita.
As the story unfolds, John's true feelings are revealed, and Rita decides to cut ties with him. Her dream of becoming a mother did not come true. She has her sister back in her life. Rita is still looking for true love. John has moved on. The child, the girl, is the one who gets her dream answered. She gains a father. The red-haired girl with the dark blue eyes gets what she stated to Rita once in her room.
December 15, 2017
3.5 stars. Love Monica Wood's writing. This book has quirky main characters that act older than they are, but the writing is so good and outside of the part when the main character's sister comes back into the picture, I liked this offbeat story (albeit a little less than her other books I have read). Quote I loved: "Until this moment I had believed forgiveness to be a special virtue, a beneficence God expected of good people. But it wasn't that at all. Forgiveness was an instinct, a desperate impulse to stay connected to the people you needed, no matter what their betrayals."
July 3, 2018
Came to Wood via Any Bitter Thing which is one of the best-written novels I’ve read in some time. This one isn’t as tight but it shares her amazing character depictions. Rita is charming and quirky but you can see how her fixation on saving people and having a child is going to become a problem. Having set it up, Wood keeps her characters true so the sad inevitable happens. John is another brilliantly drawn character, as is Laura’s family (which functions almost as a single character.)
January 18, 2020
This is the only Monica Wood book I’ve read. I picked it up at a library book sale. It was well written and easy reading but I just couldn’t identify, or empathize, with Rita’s obsession with having a child. I seriously thought about not finishing it about half way in. Because I enjoyed her writing style, I continued on and I’m glad I did. I was satisfied with the outcome of the story, but I still can’t rate it higher than 3 stars....it was OK.
February 16, 2017
I LOVED this author's book, One in a Million Boy, and wanted to read some of her earlier stuff. In this book about love and loss, Wood wrote it beautifully, but it didn't compare to the previous one I read. It might be fair to compare the two. I do have two other books of hers that I will be reading in the future.
June 8, 2020
Great story of hair dresser and pianist finding his niece in Maine years after his twin brother’s murder-suicide. Protagonist reads tarot cards and has intuitive wisdom about people. Lovely setting, characters and narrative.
August 31, 2023
I was unfamiliar with this early Monica Wood novel. What a pleasant surprise to discover it. It's about families, relationships, how tragic events shape the family dynamics and the individual, and optimism.
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May 5, 2025If was slow starting for me, and sometimes I couldn’t really see where it was going, but this is one of those books that has a bunch of memorable quotable moments - making me wish I had underlined or highlighted so I could go back and reread them, even though I don’t have to write a paper about it.
July 20, 2017
I loved One-in-a-million-boy. This wasn't as good, but the writing is still beautiful.
Scattered harsh language (not overwhelming)
Scattered harsh language (not overwhelming)
January 19, 2019
Great charcterization.
February 17, 2019
Now that was nice.....
May 27, 2019
Monica Wood does it again. Wow.
October 19, 2020
2.5 stars. I liked the first half but after that the main character seemed to become a different person and I found her extremely annoying. And the story just went on an odd path.
November 9, 2022
I loved how this story slowly unfolds. I love the inner voice of the main character. It's about loss and letting go, loneliness and being kind. Great characters! A new favorite author!
January 5, 2024
This is the most depressing story I’ve ever read.
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November 22, 20243.5⭐️
November 22, 2024
I love the way Monica Woodstells a story. She has a way of making characters come to life.
December 4, 2024
This was a good read…not as good as some of her others but her writing is so smooth you just keep reading.
December 8, 2024
Very vivid descriptions and characters but I found this more depressing than her book that was actually set in a prison.
August 8, 2025
This started very slowly and gradually opened into these troubled families. Complicated relationships create complex problems.
February 12, 2017
different
December 11, 2023
From Prince Memorial Library:
Just read anything Monica Wood writes. She knows place, character and conversation.
Just read anything Monica Wood writes. She knows place, character and conversation.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews