Interview: Author ‘Mary Calvi’ Talks Her New Book If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt’s First Love

MARY CALVI spent years wondering about the heiress who lived in the grand manor in her hometown of Yonkers, New York. Curiosity propelled her to do extensive research that spanned several years. This novel is based on what she uncovered. Calvi is a nine-time New York Emmy® award-winning journalist. She is a television news anchor in New York City. Mary is also First Lady of the City of Yonkers. She serves as a board member of the Hudson River Museum. This is her first novel.

Check out her website here, Twitter and Facebook. The book is in stores on Tuesday, February 14 from St. Martin’s Press. You can listen below to the interview.

Studded with the real love letters between a young Theodore Roosevelt and Boston beauty Alice Lee―many of them never before published―If a Poem Could Live and Breathe makes vivid what many historians believe to be the pivotal years that made the future president into the man of action that defined his political life, and cemented his legacy.

Cambridge, 1878. The era of the Gilded Age. Alice Lee sets out to break from the norms of her mother’s generation. Women are fighting for educational opportunities and exploring a new sense of intellectual and personal freedom. Native New Yorker, Harvard student Teddy Roosevelt, is on his own journey of discovery, and when they meet, unrelenting currents of love change the trajectory of his life forever.

If a Poem Could Live and Breathe is an indelible portrait of the authenticity of first love, the heartache of loss, and how overcoming the worst of life’s obstacles can push one to greatness never imagined.