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Also by Aurelia Scott:

Otherwise Normal People, May 2007
Hardcover

OTHERWISE NORMAL PEOPLE
By: Aurelia Scott

Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening

Algonquin Books
May 2007
On Sale: May 18, 2007
235 pages
ISBN: 1565124642
EAN: 9781565124646
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction

Twice a year America's rose lovers cut the prettiest blossoms off their best plants and travel to the national rose show, where they lovingly groom their precious blooms for hours in a frigid hall in order to contend for the highest honor: the Queen of Show. Doctors. Teachers. Sheet metal mechanics. Lawyers. Truck drivers. Men and women. These are type A gardeners, and for them this is a blood sport. They grow tender roses in the frigid North and disease prone roses in the humid South simply for the challenge. They decorate otherwise lovely yards with paper bags and panty hose to isolate their choice specimens. They traipse through overgrown fields in the worst weather to save antique roses from extinction.

Aurelia Scott trails these self-professed Roseaholics as they plan, prepare, and compete, battling high winds, Japanese beetles, and the finicky demands of their precious charges. With all the appeal of Word Freak, Otherwise Normal People celebrates the singular satisfaction of cultivating beauty—and, of course, the thrill of victory.

Media Buzz

Diane Rehm Show - NPR - July 23, 2007
All Things Considered - June 26, 2007