A playwright drops dead in a snowed-in old abbey, leaving behind a potentially scandalous script and setting Fr. Carl, a newly retired Jesuit priest, off on an obsessive campaign to actually produce the play... assuming he can find actors on board with the nudity. With the help of a drunken abbot, a choir of monks, and a troupe of young semi-thespians enrolled in Theater 16:337: Medieval Religious Drama (with Practicum) at The College of Martin Luther, he might just see Rose Fire through to the final curtain. Under Fr. Carl's self-styled discerning eye, modern theater, university politics, and Catholic, Protestant, and Midwest American sensibilities alike are all sent up the river along the way. Rose Fire is a novel born out of an unexpected revelation the author had when handling real-life primary texts from early Christianity. While the novel is fiction, interwoven into both the main narrative and a namesake play within the story is an extensively researched new take on the history of Western prayer beads, including an investigation of the early role alcoholism might have played in the development of the modern rosary and its mysteries.