Her Place in the Woods

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, found millions of fans and earned her accolades. 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. She and her husband had long dreamed of moving to a remote cabin in the woods. They finally made the leap, quitting their jobs and figuring out the rest as they went. The Hoovers were woefully unprepared for life off the grid. 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. 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.