Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Obsessive and Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening

Scott, a freelance journalist from Maine, hung out with several of the gardeners competing in the American Rose Society's 2004 spring national show. She discovered a subculture "where brain surgeons and construction workers are social equals," with a freewheeling competitive "spirit of make-do and can-do" that inspires improvisations like creating rose beds out of 40-gallon trash cans. (Two glossaries explain the classifications and other terminology for unfamiliar readers.) Scott's narrative structure—a chapter with each of her topics, building up to the competition, with a brief epilogue—is similar to the film Best in Show , but she doesn't poke fun, and for the most part she's caught up in their "infectious" enthusiasm for roses. Whatever weight they exert on her own passion for gardening, however, remains largely unspoken. When Scott admits that her desire to practice organic gardening is dampened by her jealousy of the blooms an interview subject achieves spraying with chemicals, the personal revelation is jarring in its unexpectedness. The backseat approach frees Scott to elaborate on the outsized personalities of the gardeners she met. If only their colorful stories were matched by photographs of the flowers they raised. (May 18)