Married writers recount a teenage romance interrupted by circumstance and revived more than four decades later in this memoir.

In 1967, 15-year-old Beth Aubrey, living in a coal-mining town in southeastern Kentucky, stumbled across a pirate radio station and requested a pen pal on-air; she received a letter from 16-year-old Jim Aubrey in the northwest of England. Their correspondence quickly became a lifeline, carrying them through adolescence with conversations about music, dreams of escape, and youthful longing. “Strange as it may seem, I felt I was in love with her, even though it was unlikely we would ever meet,” Jim recalls. Beth’s path veered toward a marriage forced upon her by her father that cut her off from Jim and plunged her into years of hardship. Back in the U.K., Jim abandoned his dreams of navigating ships at sea to build a career in the Royal Air Force. Beth eventually struggled as a single mother; Jim’s own marriage suffered under the weight of his constant relocations to different bases. When Jim rediscovered the small bookmark Beth once sent him, an internet search reawakened a bond that neither had forgotten. As the authors’ parallel stories build to their eventual reconnection, they each offer perspectives on resilience and paint a tender portrait of teenage affection carried across oceans and years. The hook of long-lost love will surely speak to fans of both memoirs and romance, and both writers excel at capturing the different atmospheres of their youths. Beth’s journey—with its stark limitations and devastating turns—often overshadows Jim’s steadier, less dramatic narrative. His chapters benefit from his warm and inviting voice, but Beth’s experiences as an abandoned wife, a trailblazing mine safety inspector, and a determined nurse add layers of intensity that sometimes make their two stories feel out of balance with each other. Still, their eventual reconnection delivers a lot of well-earned poignancy.

A slightly uneven but heartfelt memoir that will resonate with lovers of romance and second chances.