Tom Pagna, former football star at Miami of Ohio and coach at Notre Dame, traces the narrative of his family around the central character of his mother Rose, and in so doing shows us a way to live that is more than a way to survive. In it, Tom tells the wonderful stories of his family's past: * The time that Tony Pagna needed to give just the right person at his son's school a peek at his .45; * Why Rose had to name her company after a box; * The day that Tony came home only to find strange people living in his home (Rose had sold the house that morning without telling him); * Why Tom and brother Joe "needed" to kill Conrad. Filled with laughter and tears, rage and tenderness, Petals from a Rose, in the end, becomes more than a three-generation chronicle of one family. It has a little bit of every family in it. Noble rather than merely notable, the history of this family is an enduring, endearing paean to the search for the good, to the values won day by day in small deeds, not big words, to the striving for a better life, in which "better" is so much more than "more."