AUBURN — Author Aurelia Scott will read from her book “Otherwise Normal People” at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 20, at the Auburn Public Library, 49 Spring St.

The book is a colorful firsthand journey inside the world of competitive rose gardening.

Scott documents the cutthroat gardeners representing a broad cross-section of American rose lovers who will do anything to obsessively cultivate the perfect bloom. These include doctors, teachers, sheet metal mechanics, lawyers and truck drivers.

These type-A gardeners grow tender roses in the frigid North and disease-prone roses in the humid South, simply for the challenge. They traipse through overgrown fields in the worst weather to save antique roses from extinction. “Otherwise Normal People” celebrates the singular satisfaction of cultivating beauty and, of course, the thrill of victory.

The event is free and open to the public.