TOO PRECIOUS TO LOSE

In the tradition of Tiya Miles' All That She Carried and Imani Perry's South to America, TOO PRECIOUS TO LOSE is Jason Green's ancestral story about his rural Maryland family's untold historythe merger of three churches, one black, two whiteand how a radical embrace of community became their salvationand his.

Jason Green was raised on fellowshipliterally. Fellowship Lane, the once unpaved road he grew up on, served as a spiritual metaphor throughout his coming of age. A precocious preacher's kid, Green felt a call to the ministry but ultimately devoted himself to the people in a different waythrough public service. After working on Barack Obama's presidential campaign, he spent four and a half years working in the White House as special assistant to President Obama.

However, Green's government career was cut short by a devastating call that it appeared his ninety-five-year-old grandmother was on her presumptive deathbed. At her side, he listened while she detailed her life story dating back to her 1918 birth in Quince Orchard, a town that no longer exists. He was preoccupied with disbelief; how could he have never known the true legacy of his tiny community? How could a whole town's existence be erased but for the memory of a few surviving elders? Green's historical research uncovered a surprising trove of tales about the determination of his newly freed ancestors to build an African American house of worship, and how generations later, on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, their progeny would be at the center of a brave decision to create an integrated church. Quince Orchard's lost story is part of what Green calls the texture in the American fabric: the moral leadership of the Black church, the longstanding resilience of the Black community, and the transformative love of the Black family.

Fueled by a new understanding of where he comes from, Green traces one family through a century of life in a single community, asking deeply personal questions about belonging and finding answers from the compassionate, communal-led lives of his forebears.

Jason Green is a Maryland-based community organizer turned attorney, tech entrepreneur, public speaker, and film director. He previously served as special assistant to the president, and associate White House counsel to President Obama, where he provided legal counsel on economic and domestic policy matters. Green leads his hometown's fundraising campaign to preserve the Pleasant View Historic Site and chairs the Montgomery County Commission on Remembrance and Reconciliation. He currently serves as executive in residence at Zeal Capital Partners, is a fellow at the Urban Institute's Research to Action Lab and is the co-founder of the pioneering economic impact measurement company SkillSmart. Green is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and Yale Law School. He resides in Maryland. Social Media: X: @JG1732; Instagram: @jg1732.