Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
David Hakensen is an award-winning public relations executive with more than forty years of experience. He has served on several nonprofit boards and was board president of the Minnesota Historical Society.
<p>"<i>Her Place in the Woods</i> adds so much to the story of Helen Hoover's life and work. The contrast between holding her own as a woman in mid-century professional science and breaking away for a hermit life in the North Woods plays out descriptively in David Hakensen's broadly researched biography. Hoover's emotional personal details fill in the circumstances of daily life and build a larger character than her own lyrical writings allow us to feel." - Betsy Bowen, artist and illustrator, Grand Marais, Minnesota</p><p>"David Hakensen's engaging, well-researched biography of American nature writer Helen Hoover details her years of near-primitive immersion in the northern Minnesota wilderness, the weather and wildlife that gave rise to each of her books, and finally, the conditions that forced her and her husband to abandon their paradise. <i>Her Place in the Woods</i> is a compelling portrait of an uncompromising artist. It is an excellent companion to her works and will surely assist a long-overdue Helen Hoover revival." - Ann McCutchan, author of <i>The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of </i>The Yearling</p><p>"In this marvelous book, David Hakensen, who so clearly loves Helen Hoover's writing, takes us along on her journey. From sheltered Ohio childhood to dark and difficult days in Depression-era Chicago, to finding there her lifelong partner, Ade. Then, after years of corporate life, finally making the big break—the extraordinary, life-changing move from the Big City to a primitive log cabin on Minnesota's Gunflint Trail. There, carving out a new life and a living. None of it was easy. None of it was a straight line. Much was laced with human paradox and contradiction and courage. David tells Helen's remarkable story with grace and understanding, helping readers to discover the real woman behind the myth and why her place in the woods is still the stuff of dreams." - Douglas Wood, author of <i>A Wild Path</i></p><p>"This glowing portrait sheds much-needed light on an exceptional mid-twentieth-century nature writer." - <i>Booklist</i></p><p>"David Hakensen does a deft and stylish job in describing Hoover's hardships in making a living from her passions, but readers are left enriched by her prose." - <i>Air Mail</i></p><p>"This is a great read for anyone who enjoys stories of resilience, wilderness living, and pioneering women in literature." - <i>Northern Wilds</i></p>
The biography of one of Minnesota’s most beloved nature writers, from her career in the city to her rustic cabin on Gunflint Lake
During the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Helen Hoover’s stories and essays of life in the wilderness on northern Minnesota’s Gunflint Lake, published in popular magazines and several bestselling books (including The Gift of the Deer in 1966 and A Place in the Woods in 1969), found millions of fans and earned her accolades alongside nature writers like Sigurd Olson, Rachel Carson, Sally Carrighar, and Calvin Rutstrum. Hoover’s own unlikely history of leaving a corporate career in Chicago for a small cabin without electricity or running water-with no interest in hunting or fishing-is just one chapter of the remarkable life that David Hakensen describes in Her Place in the Woods. This first complete biography illuminates how Helen Hoover (1910–1984) made a place for herself and for countless readers in, as she put it, the world of her time.
Hoover defied convention. Self-trained and without an academic degree, she worked in the male-dominated metallurgical field as a researcher at International Harvester, where she solved a long-standing problem with the manufacture of discs for farm implements and earned a patent. She and her husband, Adrian, a commercial artist, had long dreamed of moving to a remote cabin in the woods. As they started the long return drive to Chicago after a summer spent on Gunflint Lake, they finally made the leap, quitting their jobs with a long-distance phone call from Grand Marais and figuring out the rest as they went.
The Hoovers were woefully unprepared for life off the grid and slowly learned how to convert sheds into chicken coops and fend off bears. Social encounters presented their own challenges, with Helen’s fiery personality leading to clashes with hunters and other Gunflint neighbors. Gradually, the Hoovers settled into the rhythms of their remote homestead, and Helen would craft a prolific literary livelihood from her keen observations of nature and encounters with animals in the surrounding woods.
Her Place in the Woods captures both an awakening to the power and fragility of the natural world and the efforts and talents of an extraordinary woman defining herself as a writer. Though Helen Hoover would move on from the secluded North Woods, as she wrote in her final book, The Years of the Forest, “From this time on it would be both here and with me wherever I might be, as long as I should live.”
Contents
Prologue
1. A Charmed Beginning: Ohio, 1910–1929
2. Grit and Perseverance: Chicago, 1929–1937
3. Marriage and Metallurgy: Chicago, 1938–1953
4. Bears in the Basement: Gunflint Lake, 1954–1957
5. The Buck with the Generous Heart: Gunflint Lake, 1958–1962
6. The Restless Writer: Gunflint Lake, 1962–1965
7. Paradise Lost: Gunflint Lake, 1966–1971
8. Free to Roam: Florida and New Mexico, 1972–1977
9. Looking for a New Hook: Laramie, 1977–1986
Epilogue: The Long Road
Acknowledgments
Published Writings of Helen Hoover
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
<p>"<i>Her Place in the Woods</i> adds so much to the story of Helen Hoover's life and work. The contrast between holding her own as a woman in mid-century professional science and breaking away for a hermit life in the North Woods plays out descriptively in David Hakensen's broadly researched biography. Hoover's emotional personal details fill in the circumstances of daily life and build a larger character than her own lyrical writings allow us to feel." - Betsy Bowen, artist and illustrator, Grand Marais, Minnesota</p><p>"David Hakensen's engaging, well-researched biography of American nature writer Helen Hoover details her years of near-primitive immersion in the northern Minnesota wilderness, the weather and wildlife that gave rise to each of her books, and finally, the conditions that forced her and her husband to abandon their paradise. <i>Her Place in the Woods</i> is a compelling portrait of an uncompromising artist. It is an excellent companion to her works and will surely assist a long-overdue Helen Hoover revival." - Ann McCutchan, author of <i>The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of </i>The Yearling</p><p>"In this marvelous book, David Hakensen, who so clearly loves Helen Hoover's writing, takes us along on her journey. From sheltered Ohio childhood to dark and difficult days in Depression-era Chicago, to finding there her lifelong partner, Ade. Then, after years of corporate life, finally making the big break—the extraordinary, life-changing move from the Big City to a primitive log cabin on Minnesota's Gunflint Trail. There, carving out a new life and a living. None of it was easy. None of it was a straight line. Much was laced with human paradox and contradiction and courage. David tells Helen's remarkable story with grace and understanding, helping readers to discover the real woman behind the myth and why her place in the woods is still the stuff of dreams." - Douglas Wood, author of <i>A Wild Path</i></p><p>"This glowing portrait sheds much-needed light on an exceptional mid-twentieth-century nature writer." - <i>Booklist</i></p><p>"David Hakensen does a deft and stylish job in describing Hoover's hardships in making a living from her passions, but readers are left enriched by her prose." - <i>Air Mail</i></p><p>"This is a great read for anyone who enjoys stories of resilience, wilderness living, and pioneering women in literature." - <i>Northern Wilds</i></p>
The biography of one of Minnesota’s most beloved nature writers, from her career in the city to her rustic cabin on Gunflint Lake
During the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Helen Hoover’s stories and essays of life in the wilderness on northern Minnesota’s Gunflint Lake, published in popular magazines and several bestselling books (including The Gift of the Deer in 1966 and A Place in the Woods in 1969), found millions of fans and earned her accolades alongside nature writers like Sigurd Olson, Rachel Carson, Sally Carrighar, and Calvin Rutstrum. Hoover’s own unlikely history of leaving a corporate career in Chicago for a small cabin without electricity or running water-with no interest in hunting or fishing-is just one chapter of the remarkable life that David Hakensen describes in Her Place in the Woods. This first complete biography illuminates how Helen Hoover (1910–1984) made a place for herself and for countless readers in, as she put it, the world of her time.
Hoover defied convention. Self-trained and without an academic degree, she worked in the male-dominated metallurgical field as a researcher at International Harvester, where she solved a long-standing problem with the manufacture of discs for farm implements and earned a patent. She and her husband, Adrian, a commercial artist, had long dreamed of moving to a remote cabin in the woods. As they started the long return drive to Chicago after a summer spent on Gunflint Lake, they finally made the leap, quitting their jobs with a long-distance phone call from Grand Marais and figuring out the rest as they went.
The Hoovers were woefully unprepared for life off the grid and slowly learned how to convert sheds into chicken coops and fend off bears. Social encounters presented their own challenges, with Helen’s fiery personality leading to clashes with hunters and other Gunflint neighbors. Gradually, the Hoovers settled into the rhythms of their remote homestead, and Helen would craft a prolific literary livelihood from her keen observations of nature and encounters with animals in the surrounding woods.
Her Place in the Woods captures both an awakening to the power and fragility of the natural world and the efforts and talents of an extraordinary woman defining herself as a writer. Though Helen Hoover would move on from the secluded North Woods, as she wrote in her final book, The Years of the Forest, “From this time on it would be both here and with me wherever I might be, as long as I should live.”
Contents
Prologue
1. A Charmed Beginning: Ohio, 1910–1929
2. Grit and Perseverance: Chicago, 1929–1937
3. Marriage and Metallurgy: Chicago, 1938–1953
4. Bears in the Basement: Gunflint Lake, 1954–1957
5. The Buck with the Generous Heart: Gunflint Lake, 1958–1962
6. The Restless Writer: Gunflint Lake, 1962–1965
7. Paradise Lost: Gunflint Lake, 1966–1971
8. Free to Roam: Florida and New Mexico, 1972–1977
9. Looking for a New Hook: Laramie, 1977–1986
Epilogue: The Long Road
Acknowledgments
Published Writings of Helen Hoover
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
David Hakensen is an award-winning public relations executive with more than forty years of experience. He has served on several nonprofit boards and was board president of the Minnesota Historical Society.