DeFrees has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Virginia as well as a law degree from the University of Texas, and she is a published writer and an editor. In the following essay, DeFrees discusses Gilroy's simple but devastating creation of cyclical patterns that spin a family into emotional ruin.

The sting of The Subject Was Roses is that there is no crescendo in the plot, no chase scene, no block-buster action, but the emotion evinced through the dialogue is so terrifically raw that the reader can palpably feel the texture of the sofa in the middle-class living room, the satin of the roses, the consternation edging each of the characters' faces. In subtly using a very domestic scene, in which no huge event overwhelms the plot, playwright Frank Gilroy deftly and devastatingly examines the cyclical nature of pain within familial bonds. By the...