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If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt's First Love

About the Book

If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt's First Love

A fact-based romantic speculative novel about Teddy Roosevelt’s first love, by Mary Calvi, author of DEAR MARY, DEAR GEORGE.

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 and 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.

If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt's First Love
by Mary Calvi

  • Publication Date: February 14, 2023
  • Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction
  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • ISBN-10: 1250277833
  • ISBN-13: 9781250277831