Michael Wagner and his pregnant wife, Joanne, were traveling to the March for Life in Washington in 1976 when she — and their unborn baby — died unexpectedly, leaving him to raise their 12 other children alone.

Though devastated by the loss, Michael, a quiet man of faith, soldiered on and returned home to Erie, Pennsylvania, to deal with the reality of caring for nine boys and three girls between the ages of 3 and 17. He would work the third shift at a local die-casting shop so that he could be home during the day, cooking meals that often required peeling 20 pounds of potatoes and keeping up with laundry that had to be hung on a line outside absent an automatic drier.

To his youngest daughter, Stephanie (Wagner) Schlueter, who was 5 at the time, it seemed as if her father never slept. Yet, she said, she never remembered him being angry or self-pitying. “He may have had his moments in the quiet, once the door was closed, but he just exemplified true faith and trust in the Lord and lived out the words, ‘Whatever God calls you to, he provides for.’”

Years later, those words have formed the nucleus of Twelve Roses, a book Stephanie’s author husband, Greg Schlueter, has been inspired by Michael’s life to write, to offer hope to others in crisis.

After Greg married Stephanie in 1997, he had only a short time to get to know Michael before his father-in-law’s death in 1998, but it was long enough to create a strong and lasting impression of a man whose Catholic faith had sustained him as he single-handedly managed a dozen children in a house with only four bedrooms and one bathroom. To this day, Greg said, “His voice haunts me in the best sense.”

For all her father had to do and did, Stephanie added, “He was one of the most peaceful men I’ve ever encountered. That only comes from a mature relationship with the Lord. He found out in a very real, baptism-by-fire kind of way that we have no control. Often, our franticness is our need for control. In many ways he was glad he wasn’t in control.”

Both her parents were products of strong Catholic families and had met while working at the Boston Store in downtown Erie, Pennsylvania. Michael was 11 years older than Joanne, but Stephanie said they were always very vague about how their parents regarded the age difference. Married in 1957, they raised their family in a home where, Stephanie recalls, the Catholic faith was both lived and practical. She and her siblings went to Catholic schools, and priests and sisters, including two uncles and an aunt, were frequent visitors at the house. “We did the 40 Hours’ devotion, said prayers before meals, the boys were altar servers, and we went to Mass on Sunday. It was the water we lived in, the air we breathed. It was the language that we spoke.”

Today, every one of the Wagner children is a practicing Catholic who attends Mass faithfully; and, among them, they’ve had more than 50 children.

Their parents’ story has long spoken to Greg, who helped care for Michael in the last year and a half of his life. The Schlueters run the Catholic family apostolate Mass Impact.

Last December, as Greg was reflecting on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and all the people he knew who were struggling with seemingly impossible circumstances, he was inspired by Michael’s life to write Twelve Roses.

By January, he had self-published it as a paperback and eBook. Drawing on the theme of the roses St. Juan Diego gathered into his tilma to present to his bishop, the book tells the story of Anna, whose boyfriend has left her after learning she is pregnant with their child. As Anna, fearful and confused, ponders what she will do, she opens her door on Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to find a single rose wrapped in brown paper on her mailbox. A note attached to the rose says, “You are not alone.” On each of the next 11 days, another rose and another note appear, each seemingly from someone who can read her soul.

When Anna realizes on the 13th day that the 12th rose was the last she will receive, she is initially disappointed, but then she considers the significance of the number 12: “Twelve months in a year. Twelve apostles. Twelve Days of Christmas. Twelve, a number of perfection and completion.”

Over the 12 days, the messages have transformed her, and by Christmas, she knows what she will do.

Greg said Anna is a character who is very real to him because, as a student involved in the pro-life movement at Ohio’s Miami University, he knew and had spoken at length with many women in her predicament. Even before that, however, he had seen how his mother, Judy Schlueter, a nurse who founded a post-abortion healing ministry in Dublin, Ohio, understood the plight of such women. “She dove into the realm of the broken heart, the real wound of a woman facing these circumstances,” he said.

Through Anna’s story, Greg hopes to convey to those in difficult or desperate situations that whatever they are facing or need, “God wants to impart these gifts, these words, these roses.”

He said he used roses as the vehicle for Anna’s messages not only because of their tie to Our Lady of Guadalupe, but because he sees them as a means of expression and a language in themselves. Whether they are given by a man to a woman or left at a grave, he said, “They have always had symbolic consequences.” Greg said that, for instance, when he proposed to Stephanie, he gave her 12 roses during a Mass and that they then placed some on her mother’s grave. “Those roses were more than flowers,” he writes in the book, “they were symbols of a love that transcended grief, a grace that carried her family through their darkest hours, and a promise of hope that endures.”

The idea for Twelve Roses came to him almost in a mystical, spiritual way, he said, as he was praying for women in crisis situations like the one Anna faces. “Journeying with our Blessed Mother and mindful of that epicenter where we face such circumstances, in my prayer, I asked, ‘Lord, give me your heart ... for the world.’” Then, early in December, the thought struck him, “What would it be like if Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to each of us? What would she say, knowing our needs and our particular circumstances? What might Our Lady of Guadalupe be saying to me, to others?”

As leader of the Mass Impact family apostolate and a podcaster and radio-show host, Greg said he is connected in prayer to many people who are struggling and in turmoil, adding that, through Anna’s story, he wanted to open them to an awareness that grace is being poured out for them. Regardless of their circumstances, he hopes readers of his book will connect with Anna’s sense of helplessness and that the beautiful truths in the messages she receives will vanquish the lies in their lives, assuring them that they are known and not alone.

Greg said he deliberately left unnamed the identity of the sender of the roses. “I wanted people to have a mystical sense that the Word made flesh is real,” Greg said. “I felt I needed to leave it so that the soul of the person who reads it is opened to the sense of wonder that the Divine knows their situation.”

Although Michael and Joanne do not appear as characters in Twelve Roses, Greg references their story in the preface, explaining how they inspired the book.

“Their lives,” he writes, “testify to a God who meets us in our deepest pain, who whispers through the impossible, ‘You are loved. You are seen. You matter.’ And as he blesses us, he calls us to become bearers of that blessing, passing along the roses of grace, love, and hope to others.”