Author Talk: Mary Calvi’s If a Poem Could Live and Breathe

When

Monday, February 20, 2023

3pm Where

Glenview, West Wing

Who

Adults, Teens

Admission Tickets

This President’s Day, join Mary Calvi, thirteen-time New York Emmy® award–winning journalist and NYC television news anchor, who is also First Lady of the City of Yonkers, in conversation about her latest book, If a Poem Could Live and Breathe. This fact-based romantic speculative novel is about Teddy Roosevelt’s first love, to be published on Valentine’s Day 2023 by St. Martin’s Press.

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.

Enjoy excerpts from the novel in HRM’s Gilded Age historic home, Glenview. The 1877 home was built during the same era when Alice Lee set out to break from the norms of her mother’s generation, and when many women were fighting for educational opportunities and exploring a new sense of intellectual and personal freedom. Native New Yorker, Harvard student Teddy Roosevelt, was on his own journey of discovery, and when they met, unrelenting currents of love changed 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.

Followed by Q&A with HRM Director and CEO Masha Turchinsky. Book signing and reception to follow.

Copies of Mary Calvi’s book have been generously donated to attendees by HRM Trustee Christina O’Neill. The reception is sponsored by HRM Trustee Elizabeth Bracken-Thompson and Geoffrey Thompson.