{"id":5647,"date":"2021-09-28T01:04:10","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T05:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/?post_type=product&p=5647"},"modified":"2023-10-19T12:12:20","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T16:12:20","slug":"free-rose-light","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/product\/free-rose-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Rose Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free Rose Light<\/em>\u00a0is the wide-ranging story of the people and community of South Street Ministries, in Akron, Ohio, told in the style of the ministry\u2014improvisational, risky, and present. As much as this is the story of South Street through O\u2019Connor\u2019s experience of the organization, it is also an invitation to the reader by example. There is no set of conclusions or directions provided in this work, save for one: don\u2019t let anyone define your story. You claim your own story.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/h2>\n

Mary O\u2019Connor is an architect who specialized in public assembly spaces in her twenty-five-year practice in New York City. Prior to becoming an architect, she was an aquatic comedian and hostess at Manhattan Plaza Health Club. Her career came to an abrupt conclusion after a near drowning incident during an act that featured diving off the board in a full evening gown. She moves through the world via seven bicycles in four cities.<\/p>\n

O’Connor is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and received a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in North Macedonia. Free Rose Light<\/em> was pummeled and shaped into existence through the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program at The University of Akron. Visit her site at www.freeroselight.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Praise for Free Rose Light<\/em><\/h2>\n

Mary O\u2019Connor came to Akron not intending to stay, she tells us in the opening pages of Free Rose Light<\/em>. But the landscape and the people and the stories of South Akron and its unlikely evangelists, Duane and Lisa Crabbs, changed her heart. Echoing one of Duane\u2019s favorite Scripture quotes \u2013 \u201cSeek the welfare of the city\u201d \u2013 these closely observed, poetically tuned essays remind us why all places and all people are worthy of salvation.
\n\u2014David Giffels, author of Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America<\/em> and The Hard Way on Purpose<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wait \u2026 a Manhattan architect who describes herself as \u201ca lapsed Catholic lesbian\u201d writing a book about a white evangelical pastor who moved his family into the heart of an impoverished neighborhood in Akron, Ohio, to share his passion for \u201cGod\u2019s grace\u201d? What kind of equation is that?<\/p>\n

It is, improbably, an equation for literary alchemy.<\/p>\n

Mary O\u2019Connor claims to be a first-time author. I\u2019m finding that difficult to believe, because much of the writing in Free Rose Light<\/em> is beautiful. I can\u2019t even begin to count the number of times I backed up and reread a paragraph, not for greater comprehension but merely to revel in the selection, order and pacing of the words.<\/p>\n

A troubled O\u2019Connor went in search of herself and found the answers in Akron, mainly by immersing herself in the life of Duane Crabbs, a former firefighter who felt a calling to move his middle-class family into a crime-and-drug infested neighborhood on the eastern edge of Summit Lake. This is not, however, just a compelling story about Crabbs and his initially reluctant wife, Lisa, and their South Street Ministries, or even about poverty and race. It is about all of that, but it is foremost a naked journey into the heart of a unique 58-block area of Akron, past and present, an Akron that O\u2019Connor put under a non-blinking microscope to reveal the inner lives of its occupants, in the process reminding us of universal truths.
\n\u2014Bob Dyer, retired columnist, Akron Beacon Journal<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Free Rose Light: Stories Around South Street<\/em>\u00a0is a kaleidoscopic blueprint \u00a0of a hard-living community spread out for the reader with the point and poetry of an architect. \u00a0O\u2019Connor\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cfluency in the language of space\u201d and her arresting details like \u201ccurled licks of dried oil paint\u201d\u2014 reveal\u00a0 the detours in life, played out in the\u00a0 tangible\u2014and always, always coated with a soulful finish like \u201ca combination of confessional and kitchen table.\u201d<\/div>\n
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O\u2019Connor describes a habitat with its structures, an uncommon ministry and its unlikely congregants\u2014including herself\u2014in a life cycle moving from hope to deep disappointment, back to hope again\u2014very much like that of their river\u2014the Cuyahoga: loved, neglected and abused, and ever-reaching for revival.<\/p>\n

A singular love letter of a memoir, celebrating the life of a community embraced \u00a0by the gritty steadfast \u201cwalls\u201d of its South Street Ministry.
\n\u2014Viki Merrick, Co-producer of\u00a0The Moth Radio Hour<\/em>\u00a0and Senior Editor on the NPR series\u00a0This I Believe<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In\u00a0Free Rose Light<\/i>, Mary O\u2019Connor writes an intimate portrayal of South Street, of Akron, and of the tender relationships that transform ordinary landscapes into life changing experiences. \u201cFrom the familiar came the quiet extraordinary,\u201d writes O\u2019Connor. This is a book about falling in love with Akron and the people who make this city brilliant. \u201cAkron saved my life three times,\u201d says O\u2019Connor, telling us of her journey to Akron, of Duane and Lisa Crabbs\u2019 devotion to South Street, and how \u201ca courageous decision between two people can change the world.\u201d Read this book now.
\n\u2014Noor Hindi,\u00a0Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow<\/em>.<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Media<\/h2>\n

A review of Free Rose Light by Mary O’Connor<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n