When the Sirens Stop: A True Story of Restoration in North St. Louis

by Lucas Rouggly

This book started out as a way to capture some of the stories we had experienced on Enright Avenue. It quickly turned into a therapy session. As a white guy moving into a black neighborhood, I knew better than to claim to be a “savior for North St. Louis.” But there was still part of me that hoped to make a difference. I wanted to see my neighborhood changed, but what actually happened is that I was changed. This is a story of my journey. I have had a mindset reversal on racism and the complexities of American poverty. I have changed my opinion on how I can make a difference, but after 10 years of experience, I am more hopeful than ever that transformation is on the horizon.

222 pages, Paperback

Published June 26, 2023

Reviews

[Micah Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a degree of suffering everywhere in the world. Every person is broken and in need of some sort of healing. It is crucial to militate against an ethnocentric and classist paradigm in making these judgements of who could use some help, what should be changed, and what justice should look like.

At the same time, we can also acknowledge that some places contain greater suffering than others. Some people are more oppressed than others. Some contexts have greater need of just intervention and transformation than others. There are many ways for people to help make the world better, including seeking to transform a place where there is generally less suffering. It does make sense, though, that if someone from a privileged background has the selflessness and courage to inhabit a more broken context, they would be positioning themselves to make a unique and particularly meaningful impact.

North St. Louis is one of those historically oppressed places, hungry for justice, ripe for transformation. Lucas Rouggly is one of those people who answers the call to enter into (and not leave) that particularly broken context.

These abstractions play out concretely in When the Sirens Stop: A True Story of Restoration in North St. Louis. As a St. Louis native (from North County) who has had the chance to collaborate with Lucas’s non-profit, LovetheLou, I was a given a small window into the transformative impact of the organization in its neighborhood and Lucas’s impact upon his neighbors. This book chronicles some of the many bumps in the road and moments of breakthrough that have occurred since the Rouggly family moved from Jackson, Missouri, to North City.

Lucas would be the first to tell you that he is also in need of restoration, just as much as (and often more than) his neighbors. This “True Story of Restoration in North St. Louis,” then, blurs the lines between “helper” and “helped” and calls the privileged towards broken contexts where bilateral transformation awaits.

“The thing is, you can’t be lukewarm in the city. You can’t just smoke a little weed and shoot dice. The magnetic pull of brokenness is too strong. You either have to run away from the pull of it or you’re going to get sucked in, eventually. There is no in-between.”

[Jason Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm rating this five stars, but perhaps only for a very limited audience--those with a passion for St Louis, the inner city, and/or bottoms-up, gospel-driven transformation. Which maybe is or should be a pretty broad audience.

I have little faith in the mayor of St Louis, the governor of Missouri, or any DEI initiative anywhere solving the problems of North St Louis, beyond the "Delmar Divide."

I have a lot of faith, though, that people like Lucas Rouggly, who moved his family into the eye of the hurricane, so to speak, can make a difference in the name of Jesus in the lives of the people they touch.

This is a touching, heart-rending, true story of a man who had the courage to make a difference.

Recommended.