Bronxville Author Pens YA Novel About Soccer

Lily James, the protagonist of Andrea Montalbano's debut novel, "Breakaway," is a 12-year-old soccer star, and her brother Billy is eight "going on intolerable."  Montalbano admits she named the characters after her two children, Lily and William Jebejian, but that's where the similarities end. 

"This book was more inspired by the fact that I wanted to write about a strong girl protagonist," Montalbano said. "I didn't think there were enough of those kinds of books."

"Breakaway" is the story of Lily, or LJ, a big shot on the soccer field whose willfulness and temper work against her. When she is benched, LJ figures out a few things about herself and how "by losing a little glory, you can win more than just championships." 

"Writing about girl's soccer required no research, because I'd spent a lifetime doing it," Montalbano said. "I can say that the soccer scenes are pretty much what I drew from memories on the field—not the getting kicked off the team part—but the actual play-by-play. I really did want to write about a girl who was strong-willed and competent with a lot of abilities, yet flawed, and how she could overcome that."

Montalbano, who moved to Bronxville in 2008, grew up playing the sport in her hometown of Key Biscayne, Fla., which had an unusually well developed girls soccer program.

This was the 1980s and women's soccer hadn't yet attained the popularity it achieved a decade later with World Cup and Olympic victories. Like LJ, Montalbano also had a coach named Chris, from the age of eight until she outgrew the team at 16. Montalbano excelled on the soccer field, moving up to local and state teams and being named Miami-Dade County Player-of-the-Year. It was her father William Montalbano, a foreign correspondent, who noticed that some of the better soccer players were heading to top east coast schools and encouraged her to set her sights on the Ivy League.

Recruited by Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Brown, she chose Harvard, where she captained the team and was All-Ivy all four years. In 2007, Montalbano was inducted into the Varsity Club Hall of Fame and asked to write an essay about her experience as an athlete at Harvard and how those experiences affected the rest of her life. It became the germ of an idea to write "Breakaway."

"It was the first time I'd written about soccer," Montalbano said. "I had also become a mother of two children and, all of a sudden, I was thinking sports in a larger context—how it could teach."

Montalbano put aside the adult thriller she'd completed, but hadn't sold and, in March 2008, began writing the book that would become "Breakaway." With only a handful of chapters written, her agent, Esther Newberg, was able to sell the book, which was published on May 13 by Philomel, a Penguin imprint. The book jacket features a quote from best-selling author Carl Hiaasen, who co-wrote three crime novels with her late father.

After graduating from Harvard in 1990, Montalbano followed in her father's footsteps, applying to his alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her first job was with ABC News Radio and she then joined NBC News, starting as a researcher and moving up to supervising producer of the "Today" show. She left NBC in 2005, intending to write books and, as usual, she's achieved her goal.

Montalbano is looking forward to returning to "Today" on June 11 to discuss her book as part of the kick-off to the World Cup.

And she's already at work on her next novel, which will be about dryads, or oak tree nymphs. She was inspired by her daughter Lily's distress over the large oak trees knocked down by recent fierce storms or subsequently removed as a precaution. 

Lily, 6, has just joined Eastchester Youth Soccer and plays for the Clovers, while William, 3-1/2, will have to wait a few years.  The entire family, including Montalbano's husband, Diron Jebejian, will be perched in front of the television set to watch the World Cup.

"We will be obsessed!" Montalbano said.

For more information about Montalbano, visit her website at www.andreamontalbano.com.