Author Biography
Bestselling author Rolf Margenau has had a varied career. He was a soldier in the Korean War, a correspondent for the Pacific Stars and Stripes, a professional photographer, an attorney specializing in international corporate law, a volunteer executive running a not-for-profit housing the homeless, a business manage, and, lately, an author and Master Gardener. As an English Major in college, he published short stories but found the pay insufficient to support a wife and one and a half children. Being an attorney paid better. Later in life, he returned to writing when he discovered that his wife had kept the 300 plus letters he wrote her from Korea. They became the basis for a novel about the Korean War published in 2011. Public Information tells the story of a hapless young soldier who comes of age in Korea in the midst of bloody combat. His story recounts in gory, ribald, poignant and accurate detail how he manages to survive his sixteen-month tour of duty. Public Information became an Amazon best seller. Pistils and Poetry, the author's second book, is a compilation of Elizabethan poems (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne, and numerous others) juxtaposed with the author's photographs of flowers. It is a rich and engaging poetry book, enhanced by luscious photos of flowers. In March 2013, Margenau published Master Gardener, a satirical novel that explores conflicts between the benefits of engineered crops and their potential for ecological disaster. Wylie Cypher, the hero of Public Information, now seventy-five years old, battles malevolent BIG AG, and senior citizens band together as eco-terrorists to save the monarch butterfly High Andes, published in August 2014, is a thriller involving a middle-aged Wylie Cypher and his daughter, Mercy, trying to elude numerous villains chasing them across the White Mountains of Peru. Set in 1980, the story deals with armed insurrection by Maoist guerrillas, smuggling ancient artifacts, disappearances of troublemakers, a five hundred year old child mummy, and the CIA. The Commode Companion is an adult humor book featuring more than 100 photographs of various creatures speaking their minds about numerous subjects. It exposes the innermost thoughts of animals, birds, bugs, butterflies, and frogs, and guarantees to cure constipation through laughter. Rolf Margenau lives in rural New Jersey with his first wife of 60 years and both wild and domestic animals. National Parks, his latest novel, arrives spring 2016.
