Synopsis 

​​

The opening curtain of The Archer reveals Yvonne “Vonnie” Ivers’  first encounter with who became her long-time mentor Gunnar T. Brandt.  Having grown up in small town Kansas she finds herself in urban settings and learns the lessons of organizing from a Chicago organizer known for his brash persona and legacy in community organizing. 

Her path takes twists and turns after her father, William, moves the family to the state capitol in search of career fulfillment and desperate for a challenge that would clear the fog of his depression. There she falls in love, Vonnie tumbling for Joey Thomas, and finds belonging in the high school music department giving her life only to be lured into traps laid for her by a man she had grown to trust, Hale Robertson, her music teacher.  The cyclone of emotions in the aftermath sends her and Joey off to college where they marry, start a family, and settle into a typical white middle class life. 

Moving their young family to the inner city of Wichita Vonnie and Joey decide to live a different life. The former pastor turned community organizer, Gunnar T. Brandt, introduces to her what would become her future. Vonnie's restless spirit and unsatisfied longing connects her to people on the edges where she encounters human suffering that neither her Methodist upbringing nor musical grooming could have prepared her for.

Brandt mentors Vonnie for years teaching her how to put together groups block by block. Living in the middle of the drug war, she knocks doors in neighborhoods the city had long forgotten. Eventually she bonds with two women from south of the border who take her into the heart of a hidden community. Together they build an army culminating in a showdown in the nation’s capital. There they harness a magical moment triggering a cascade of thousands becoming citizens.

At the closing curtain, Vonnie presides over her mentor’s final public meeting, laying Gunnar to rest. As she reconciles his death, she realizes what she must do. A tale of violation, power, danger, and heartbreak, Vonnie uses it all to vanquish her past and move into the future.