A fresh look at World War II through the eyes of four young people who come of age during the war years.

Nine-year-old Achim relates his experiences...

Rolf Margenau
Rolf Margenau

Prize-winning author Rolf Margenau has written six novels and published two photography books. The first five 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. 

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 is a fable about the results of a medical team’s effort to prolong human life by 30 years, 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 2020 o 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 has a 4.3 star rating on Amazon and is his best selling novel.  Prompted by reader suggestions, the author is working on a sequel to War story --  called Cold War  

In his previous life, he was a Sergeant in Korea during the war, a professional photographer, an attorney specializing in international corporate arrangements, managed businesses large and small, founded a homeless shelter in Red Bank, New Jersey, collected antique cars and, now, is an author.

Rolf Margenau lives in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania with his first wife of over sixty years. So far, he has three great grandsons.

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War Story

A fresh look at World War II through the eyes of four young people who come of age during the war years.
Nine-year-old Achim relates his experiences on the home front in New Haven, Connecticut. He’s a canny Tom Sawyer type with a good heart and a knack for reporting the important events of the times and his adventuresome life. He manages a little...

LONGEVITY: Should we prolong human life by 30 years?

Could this be your future?

Longevity is a fable disguised as a medical thriller that ponders the justification for extending human life by thirty years. The tone, however, is light-hearted, even though murder, mayhem, misdirection, and decapitation inhabit Longevity’s pages.

The author tosses his main characters into deep holes and finds...

Public Information: Coming of age during the Korean War

Now a Kindle best seller!

Twenty-year-old Wylie Cypher accidentally finds himself in the raging conflict of the Korean War in 1953. As he sits in a latrine considering his misfortune, a bomb explodes nearby. His only thought is, should he survive this moment, how will he make it through a sixteen-month tour of duty alive?

Fortunately, he...

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I appreciate hearing from readers. Their comments, even the negative ones, are helpful. 

I'm especially interested in thoughts about War Story. 

I' am writing a sequel called Cold War. It describes the lives of the four major characters who grew up during the first novel during the next  ten years from 1956 to 1956. It was a fascinating time -- an existential threat  from the Soviet Union behind every action combined with a booming economy and rampant discrimination against women and anyone who wasn't white.