A sickly Harvard student, a first great love, and a brutal northern forest — this is where a president is made.
At twenty, Theodore Roosevelt flees to the remote woods of Aroostook County, Maine — frail, grieving his father, desperate to prove himself. There he encounters a rugged woodsman named William Sewall, who becomes his guide, his mentor, and a much-needed father figure.
Together with Sewall's nephew Wilmot Dow, they will one day follow TR all the way to the Badlands. But first, under Sewall's watch in the Maine woods, TR learns to paddle and portage, to hunt and endure; to let the cold and labor remake him from the inside out.
Over three journeys north, Roosevelt hardens his body and character alike. The wild places sink into him, and prepare him for conservation fights and the Badlands years still to come.
Between trips, he returns to Harvard and Boston, where another force is shaping him: Alice Hathaway Lee. Brilliant, vivid, and nearly erased from the history books, she is the first great love of the man being made.
Grounded in local lore and the stories passed directly through William Sewall and his descendants, this novel restores an overlooked chapter to its full weight — the year a vulnerable young man became someone the world would never forget.
Robert Louis DeMayo is a longtime member of The Explorers Club and the author of Aroostook Dreams, a historical mystery spanning fifty years of the same landscape as this novel —with Roosevelt himself appearing in a flashback chapter. His other historical fiction follows real-world wanderers and adventurers across the edges of the known world.
Winner of the John E. Weaver Excellent Reads Award for: All Ages Historical.
Wilmot Dow.
William Sewall, Wilmot Dow & T. Roosevelt.
William Sewall.
While at Harvard, TR met Alice Lee and fell madly in love with her. Eventually, she became his first wife, but waiting for that date nearly
drove him mad.
When TR courted Alice, he also boxed and rode his horse every day to see her. When the horse was injured, he would run the six miles to her house, then casually enter and visit before running back to Harvard.
Roosevelt climbed Mt. Katahdin on one of his visits, completing part of the approach in one boot and the rest in a pair of mocassins.
When Theodore stayed with William Sewall in Island Falls, he often spent his Sundays at Bible Point (now a State Historic Site).
After finishing this novel, be sure to explore Robert Louis DeMayo’s other historical fiction
based on remarkable real-world wanderers and adventurers.
