Helen Hoover

Helen Hoover (1910-1984)

Helen Hoover was an American nature writer who wrote four popular adult books and three books for the juvenile market in the 1960s and 1970s.  She and her husband Adrian, an illustrator of her books, moved from Chicago to a remote cabin in northern Minnesota in 1954, which became the source of material for her books. 

Hoover's first book, The Long-Shadowed Forest (Thomas Crowell, 1963; University of Minnesota Press, 1999), focused on the flaura and fauna surrounding their cabin; it served as a basic guidebook to the northern woods. Her second, and best-selling book, The Gift of the Deer (Alfred A. Knopf, 1966; University of Minnesota Press, 1999), followed the life of a starving buck deer that happened upon their cabin one Christmas. The story of the buck and his subsequent offspring became a huge seller and was the first of three books serialized by Reader's Digest Condensed Books. In 1966 she also wrote her first juvenile book, Animals at My Doorstep (Parents Magazine Press, 1966). A Place in the Woods (Alfred A. Knopf, 1969; University of Minnesota Press, 1999) followed, telling the story of how the Hoover's gave up their professional careers in Chicago and moved to northern Minnesota and relating the challenges they encountered in their first six months there. He final book was The Years of the Forest (Alfred A. Knopf, 1973: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), which covered the 17 years the Hoover's lived in northern Minnesota before leaving the area permanently.

Hoover had an unconventional career for a woman. Born January 20, 1910, in Greenville, Ohio, Hoover was the daughter of Thomas Franklin and Hannah Blackburn. She attended Ohio University from 1927-29, until her father died suddently in 1929. She and her mother moved to Chicago out of economic nececssity, where Helen sought work as an adddressograph operator and a a proofreader. During World War II, she was able to get a job as an analytical chemist with Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory and also took night courses at De Paul University and teh University of Chicago. Following the war, she was able to continue in this field, working at Ahlberg Bearing Company as a metallurgist from 1945-48. In 1948 she became a reseach metallurgist at International Harvester Co., where worked she did earned her a patent for agricultural implement disks.

"We moved to our log cabin on the Canadian border of Minnesota, and there, under the grim nececssity of earning money or starving, I began to write seriously... articles on the natural world around us." From 1959-1969 Hoover was a regular contributor to Humpty Dupty magazine and wrote the "Widlerness Chat" column for Defenders of Wildlife News from 1963-73. She was a contributor of features and articles to Audubon, AMerican Mercury, Gourmet, Organic Gardening and Farming, Saturday review, Living Wilderness and Woman's Journal (London). It was through contacts made through writing for children's and nature magazines that she received her first book contract.

Following the success of her books and growing developemtn around their cabin, the Hoover's left norhtern Minnesota to visit other parts of the U.S., eventually living in Taos, New Mexico, where an author and illustrator could live without attention. The Hoover's eventually settled in Laramie, Wyoming, where they lived the remainder of their lives.

Hoover was part of a movement of mid-century nature writers such as Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olson, Rachel Carson, Edwin Way Teale and Calvin Rutstrum who appealed to people's love and appreciation of nature and a sense to protect the environemnt. As a scientist, Hoover brought an analytical eye to her writing, as evidenced by the guide-like quality of her first book, the Long Shadowed Forest. Written in the early 1960s but not published until 1963, Hoover also called for the ban of DDT and detailed its harmful effects on wildlife at the same time Rachel Carson was making the same claim in her seminal work Silent Spring.

Hoover died from perontitis in Fort Collins, Colorado, on July 3, 1984.