In her new book "If a Poem Could Live and Breath: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt's First Love," Calvi explores the story of Teddy's first love, Alice Lee, through their love letters.
This is a romance for the ages — and just in time for Valentine's Day.
Inside Edition's Mary Calvi discovered a trove of love letters that offer a rare look into American history thanks to their author, future president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt .
In her new book "If a Poem Could Live and Breath: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt's First Love," Calvi explores the story of Teddy's first love, Alice Lee, through their love letters.
"For Teddy, it was love at first sight," Mary says. "For Alice, she was playing hard to get."
Mary showed Inside Edition the letters at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site in Manhattan.
Most historians believed that the letters had been destroyed over the years, which explains why so little is known of Alice.
Then, Mary discovered them buried deep in the archives at Harvard University.
"To see the love that Teddy Roosevelt had for her and the love she had for him, I was caught up in it," Mary admits.
The future president was a student at Harvard and Alice a prominent Boston socialite when the two began their courtship.
In one letter, Alice refers to her beau as "my dearest Teddykins."
In that same letter, Alice writes: "I shall have you here Saturday night. I shall not let any other look at you as I shall want you all to myself."
Teddy felt just as strongly about Alice,
"My dearest love, I worship you so that it seems almost desecration to touch you," writes Teddy in one letter. "And yet when I am with you, I can hardly let you a moment out of my arms, my purest queen."
Teddy signs off by writing: "My own heart's darling, your loving The."
Mary used these letters as the basis for her latest historical fiction novel, which is now on bookstands
"There I was, with the original Gilded Age love letters and feeling very close and intimate and almost as if I was intruding," Mary tells Inside Edition.
The pair did eventually marry, but this love story met a tragic end when Alice passed away two days after giving birth to the couple's first child. Her death also came just 11 hours after Teddy's mother, Martha, passed away in the same home.
Alice was just 22.
"Alice has been dismissed and disparaged and really erased from history, but she had so much to say, and she deserves to be heard," Mary says of her novel's protagonist.
READ AN EXCERPT FROM IF A POEM COULD LIVE AND BREATH: A NOVEL OF TEDDY ROOSEVELT'S FIRST LOVE
