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Master Gardener
Please be aware, this is a novel - not a gardening book! However, there are some excellent gardening tips offered by one of the heroines, Bitsy Crangle, in her monthly gardening newsletter. Mainly, though, this is about what happens to our environment through the unregulated development and use of genetically engineered seeds and the chemicals involved in their use. But it is not a polemic; the story is told with humor and appreciation for volunteer groups everywhere.
The following questions (and others) are answered in the novel.
What happens when a Master Gardener innocently plants packets of magical seeds from the Peruvian Amazon in experimental plots operated by New Anglia’s agricultural college? Why does Bemis International Group, Agricultural Chemicals Division (BIG AG) feel so threatened by the plants those seeds produce? What is the mysterious eco-terrorism group doing to save the monarch butterfly?
Best selling amazon.com author Rolf Margenau revisits the twenty-year-old hero of Public Information, Wylie Cypher, in his seventy-fifth year. He is a volunteer Master Gardener and is involved with four women plus Emma, his Weimaraner. One of those women is responsible for the plants that threaten to destabilize the comfortable world of seeds genetically engineered to withstand potent weed killers. Another is Wylie’s bitter ex-wife. The third is a granddaughter who lives with him as she completes law school and the fourth, Linda, is his former nurse who gives new meaning to septuagenarians living in sin.
Wylie has had a career as an international attorney. He employs his negotiating and legal skills with varying degrees of success in resolving numerous challenges that arise during the fourteen-month period of the story. Mainly, he tries to save fellow Master Gardener Anne Proctor from ruin at the hands of BIG AG. In doing so, he leads an expedition to the jungles of the Peruvian Amazon to search for magic beans, corn and wheat.
Elizabeth Pendleton Crangle (“Bitsy”) is an unlikely eco-terrorist whose monthly newspaper column offers timely gardening advice at the beginning of each chapter. Her guidance is spot on, but she does have a bit of an attitude. Gardeners will appreciate her suggestions that, as Bitsy says, will guarantee blissful gardening.
Dick Geier, the ruthless and profane CEO of BIG AG, engages in corporate shenanigans that reflect current headlines. Among other things, he manages a program that infiltrates Master Gardener organizations throughout the country, and finds new and unethical ways to enrich himself and his cronies.
The author tells the story with sharp insight and ribald humor. Gimlet prose enlivens the lawyers, tycoons, politicians, young and old lovers, windbags and adventurers who populate his story. The characters interact in Dickensian fashion, and most of them receive their just deserts.
WARNING: This story may be unsuitable for politicians, corporate bigwigs, pundits and the like who might easily be offended by truth telling.
The following questions (and others) are answered in the novel.
What happens when a Master Gardener innocently plants packets of magical seeds from the Peruvian Amazon in experimental plots operated by New Anglia’s agricultural college? Why does Bemis International Group, Agricultural Chemicals Division (BIG AG) feel so threatened by the plants those seeds produce? What is the mysterious eco-terrorism group doing to save the monarch butterfly?
Best selling amazon.com author Rolf Margenau revisits the twenty-year-old hero of Public Information, Wylie Cypher, in his seventy-fifth year. He is a volunteer Master Gardener and is involved with four women plus Emma, his Weimaraner. One of those women is responsible for the plants that threaten to destabilize the comfortable world of seeds genetically engineered to withstand potent weed killers. Another is Wylie’s bitter ex-wife. The third is a granddaughter who lives with him as she completes law school and the fourth, Linda, is his former nurse who gives new meaning to septuagenarians living in sin.
Wylie has had a career as an international attorney. He employs his negotiating and legal skills with varying degrees of success in resolving numerous challenges that arise during the fourteen-month period of the story. Mainly, he tries to save fellow Master Gardener Anne Proctor from ruin at the hands of BIG AG. In doing so, he leads an expedition to the jungles of the Peruvian Amazon to search for magic beans, corn and wheat.
Elizabeth Pendleton Crangle (“Bitsy”) is an unlikely eco-terrorist whose monthly newspaper column offers timely gardening advice at the beginning of each chapter. Her guidance is spot on, but she does have a bit of an attitude. Gardeners will appreciate her suggestions that, as Bitsy says, will guarantee blissful gardening.
Dick Geier, the ruthless and profane CEO of BIG AG, engages in corporate shenanigans that reflect current headlines. Among other things, he manages a program that infiltrates Master Gardener organizations throughout the country, and finds new and unethical ways to enrich himself and his cronies.
The author tells the story with sharp insight and ribald humor. Gimlet prose enlivens the lawyers, tycoons, politicians, young and old lovers, windbags and adventurers who populate his story. The characters interact in Dickensian fashion, and most of them receive their just deserts.
WARNING: This story may be unsuitable for politicians, corporate bigwigs, pundits and the like who might easily be offended by truth telling.
302 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 23, 2011
7 people are currently reading
1063 people want to read
About the author
Rolf Margenau
9 books100 followersRolf Margenau has written six novels and published two photography books.
The novels feature a main character named Wylie Cypher, first seen as a twenty-year-old college dropout who comes of age during the Korean War. At forty, Wylie is a successful but burned out lawyer with a failing marriage. He tries to find lost youth on a trek with his daughter through the high Andes. Instead, he finds mayhem, murder, a devastating civil war in Peru, and loses a toe.
Retired, in his mid-sixties, Wylie does battle with BIG AG as a Master Gardener. He befriends a group of eco-terrorists who help save the Monarch butterfly. Then, in a novel called National Parks, an aged Wylie lives in a dystopian future where Congress attempts to sell off our national parks to bail out a bankrupt country.
Longevity, a fable about the results of a medical team’s effort to prolong human life by 30 years, will be published early in 2019. In it Lucy Mendoza leads a team of scientists at the Prendergast Foundation who are testing an enzyme that might extend our lives by thirty years. The federal government, a major pharmaceutical company, and a billionaire investor have no qualms about eliminating Lucy to ensure that project will fail. Her former lover Grant Duran, an ex-Marine special ops officer who’s lost a hand and is now a molecular biologist, thwarts the first attempt on her life.
The novels featuring a younger Wylie are realistic, with a dose of humor. The books about older Wylie are solidly satirical. Critics find them very funny, but meaningful and thought provoking.
The author retired Wylie Cypher in 2019 to research and write about how young people with a German background respond to the demands of World War II, on the home front, at war and in an American POW camp. War Story was published in September 2021.
Rolf Margenau lives amid farmland in northern New Jersey with his first wife of over sixty years.
The novels feature a main character named Wylie Cypher, first seen as a twenty-year-old college dropout who comes of age during the Korean War. At forty, Wylie is a successful but burned out lawyer with a failing marriage. He tries to find lost youth on a trek with his daughter through the high Andes. Instead, he finds mayhem, murder, a devastating civil war in Peru, and loses a toe.
Retired, in his mid-sixties, Wylie does battle with BIG AG as a Master Gardener. He befriends a group of eco-terrorists who help save the Monarch butterfly. Then, in a novel called National Parks, an aged Wylie lives in a dystopian future where Congress attempts to sell off our national parks to bail out a bankrupt country.
Longevity, a fable about the results of a medical team’s effort to prolong human life by 30 years, will be published early in 2019. In it Lucy Mendoza leads a team of scientists at the Prendergast Foundation who are testing an enzyme that might extend our lives by thirty years. The federal government, a major pharmaceutical company, and a billionaire investor have no qualms about eliminating Lucy to ensure that project will fail. Her former lover Grant Duran, an ex-Marine special ops officer who’s lost a hand and is now a molecular biologist, thwarts the first attempt on her life.
The novels featuring a younger Wylie are realistic, with a dose of humor. The books about older Wylie are solidly satirical. Critics find them very funny, but meaningful and thought provoking.
The author retired Wylie Cypher in 2019 to research and write about how young people with a German background respond to the demands of World War II, on the home front, at war and in an American POW camp. War Story was published in September 2021.
Rolf Margenau lives amid farmland in northern New Jersey with his first wife of over sixty years.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 12, 2014
What an absorbing book! I enjoyed the pointed but accurate gardening advice that opened every chapter, and thought the main characters were engaging and well-rounded. As in any good satire, there are numerous characters with odd names (Forsythia Bandage, the Vietnamese Mary Smith, and Phineas Allgud) coursing through the book’s pages, so one needs an agile memory to keep up. It is definitely worth the effort because the word plays and jokes are both subtle and hilarious.
Magic seeds begin and end the action. They produce plants that are super in many ways – abundant crops, self pollinating, self-weeding, and pest free. BIG AG takes note and does what it can to thwart the development of the seeds. In the process they attack Wylie Cypher’s friend, Ann Proctor, so Wylie, retired attorney, fights back.
A group of Master Gardeners turns to eco-terrorism to save the monarch butterfly, creating genetically modified seeds to rival the ones produced by BIG AG, headed by the venal and corrupt Dick Geier. Thinks look bleak for Wylie and Ann, as well as the aging eco-terrorists. Eventually, all plot lines are satisfactorily resolved: the good guys prevail and nasty things happen to the villains. I suspect the author is a fan of Shakespearean comedies since the book ends with a joyous wedding and most lovers are reunited.
For all the laughs and improbably situations, the book clearly examines the dangers of modern agricultural practices and examines their benefits and drawbacks. Who knew that the weed killer glyphosate was responsible for the steep decline in monarch butterfly population?
The book is well researched. For example, the author clearly and simply explains how genetic engineering works and how plants can be tweaked to be both abundant and sterile.
I would enjoy having dinner with most of the main characters, especially the retired Bitsy Crangle, who writes the monthly gardening column and grows into a formidable female presence.
The book draws out numerous very serious themes that affect our environment, but it is not a polemic. Mostly, I was laughing as I absorbed interesting, current information about the state of modern agriculture. I rate this book five stars and strongly recommend it.
Magic seeds begin and end the action. They produce plants that are super in many ways – abundant crops, self pollinating, self-weeding, and pest free. BIG AG takes note and does what it can to thwart the development of the seeds. In the process they attack Wylie Cypher’s friend, Ann Proctor, so Wylie, retired attorney, fights back.
A group of Master Gardeners turns to eco-terrorism to save the monarch butterfly, creating genetically modified seeds to rival the ones produced by BIG AG, headed by the venal and corrupt Dick Geier. Thinks look bleak for Wylie and Ann, as well as the aging eco-terrorists. Eventually, all plot lines are satisfactorily resolved: the good guys prevail and nasty things happen to the villains. I suspect the author is a fan of Shakespearean comedies since the book ends with a joyous wedding and most lovers are reunited.
For all the laughs and improbably situations, the book clearly examines the dangers of modern agricultural practices and examines their benefits and drawbacks. Who knew that the weed killer glyphosate was responsible for the steep decline in monarch butterfly population?
The book is well researched. For example, the author clearly and simply explains how genetic engineering works and how plants can be tweaked to be both abundant and sterile.
I would enjoy having dinner with most of the main characters, especially the retired Bitsy Crangle, who writes the monthly gardening column and grows into a formidable female presence.
The book draws out numerous very serious themes that affect our environment, but it is not a polemic. Mostly, I was laughing as I absorbed interesting, current information about the state of modern agriculture. I rate this book five stars and strongly recommend it.
August 18, 2013
I received this book for free through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
This was an odd book. Parts of it were very good--I loved the "newspaper column" at the beginning of each chapter--and many of the characters were very likable. But there were really way too many characters most off whom had very detailed back stories that had nothing to do with the overall plot. The lack of quotation marks when people were speaking made it hard to follow conversations. The plot itself was incredibly convoluted with plenty of irrelevant side stories. And the multitude of romantic happy endings at the end was a little overdone.
On the other hand I did care about the characters working through the major story line and there were lots of laugh out loud funny moments.
Probably this should be a 2 1/2 star book, but I'll give it 3 because I don't think it's bad enough to be a 2.
This was an odd book. Parts of it were very good--I loved the "newspaper column" at the beginning of each chapter--and many of the characters were very likable. But there were really way too many characters most off whom had very detailed back stories that had nothing to do with the overall plot. The lack of quotation marks when people were speaking made it hard to follow conversations. The plot itself was incredibly convoluted with plenty of irrelevant side stories. And the multitude of romantic happy endings at the end was a little overdone.
On the other hand I did care about the characters working through the major story line and there were lots of laugh out loud funny moments.
Probably this should be a 2 1/2 star book, but I'll give it 3 because I don't think it's bad enough to be a 2.
September 13, 2014
I'm attracted by books that tell you the truth about controversial themes.
January 15, 2020
For many gardeners, the huge AG companies' control over which seeds are available is always a constant concern, even more so for those of us who prepare for the future and want heirloom seeds easily available. So, this story is a perfect example of those concerns. Characterization was excellent.
However, it last a star for the unconventional dialogue voice.
However, it last a star for the unconventional dialogue voice.
February 24, 2020
I won this book from Goodreads. I found this book to be very interesting. It is scary the lengths that BigAG will go to stop a person from disrupting their money flow. Bitsy has a great view of life and has had an incredible one. I would definitely recommend this book.
August 29, 2025
I liked the way the author wove the tenets, history and practices of the master gardener program into the story. The gardening newsletters were perky and conveyed good info. However the number of characters with back and side stories was overwhelming.
February 7, 2020
This is a very engaging book and well written. I have enjoyed it immensely.
August 30, 2015
By Claire Sullivan but wasn't available on Good Read
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews