The Reading Bud

Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring Melanie Faith for her latest release, The Price of Breathing.

Book: The Price of Breathing
Author: Melanie Faith
Publication Date: September 15, 2026
Pages: 134 pages
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Genre: Novel in Verse, Poetry
Available in: e-book and paperback formats
For Readers Who Enjoyed: Modern Poetry: Poems by Diane Seuss, Here is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan & Out of Sight by Eamon Grennan

About the Book

“This is a tender, beautifully woven and expertly crafted story told in poems about the power of first loves, long marriages, the ache of illness, and the way feelings and actions from the past linger in all of us” Antonia Albany, author of Around the Corner, Up Ahead

Meet Helen and Harry Crawley, a couple living in the American West in 1951. A letter arrives that will detonate their everyday routine and send Harry swiftly traveling East (to Helen’s protest) to visit his ailing first love, Flora, now a polio patient hospitalized in an iron lung.

What follows—in telegrams, free-verse poems, letters, and postcard text—is a timeless look at relationship dynamics, raising questions about the strength and meaning of first love long after the sweethearts have parted, the teamwork and ties that bind later-in-life bonds, and the challenges of living with chronic illness.

Will Harry return home to Helen? Should Helen accept his return if he does? Or will Harry’s renewed bond with Flora prove a permanent disruption and the start of a different life for all involved?

You can find The Price of Breathing here
Vine Leaves Press| Goodreads

About the Author

Melanie Faith

Melanie Faith is a poet, photographer, writer, educator, daydreamer, and frequent doodler. She loves film cameras and naps. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. Her writing and art have appeared recently in The Bluebird Word, Flowers of the Field, Grand Dame Literary, and New Contexts 8: An Anthology. Her next poetry book, The Price of Breathing, will be published by Vine Leaves Press in September 2026. Her poetry collection, Does It Look Like Her?, follows Alix, a forty-something artist.

You can find author Faith here:
Website

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