Hoover's second book, The Lion's Cub, was a children's historical fiction novel - the story of an 1800s Muslim boy living in Russia during a holy war. Hoover before Children came out because there was already a children's author named Helen Hoover. A point of interest - Hoover changed her pen name to H.M. As luck would have it, getting published took Hoover every single day.įinally, in 1973, Hoover received word that her first book, a juvenile science fiction tale entitled Children of Morrow, was to be published. She gave herself four years in which to succeed. There, she held numerous office positions - none of which particularly interested her - until, in 1969, she decided to ditch traditional jobs and pursue a career in writing.
Two years later, wanderlust struck again this time Hoover found her way to New York. Six months later, she realized her "total unsuitability for the profession," dropped out, found another job, and resumed college coursework at Los Angeles City College. Mid-coursework, though, she took off on a whim to Los Angeles, where she entered nursing school in 1956. Hoover took an office job after graduation at a Canton, Ohio steel company, then another near the campus of Mount Union College in Alliance, where she began to work toward a college degree. She felt much more challenged in high school - both socially, because she was overweight, and academically, because she actually had to pay attention in class and do her homework to maintain good grades.
"I slowly decided that if people's first exposure to reading was Dick and Jane, it was probable that for the rest of their lives, the very sight of a book might induce anxiety and the mad urge to cry 'Run, Self! Run! Run!'" Hoover attended the local public school, but soon found herself bored with the elementary-level curriculum. The latter two would become recurring themes in her future books. Both her mother, Sadie Hoover, and her father, Edward Hoover, were school teachers and "amateur naturalists," and passed on to Hoover (and her three siblings) a love of books, a respect for nature, and a fear for the future of our planet. "One of the things that helps to create a writer is to be a lonely child - the younger the better - so that one learns to be alone and to amuse oneself in solitude." These words by Helen Mary Hoover offer some insight into the science fiction writer's life, and what made her into the writer she is today.īorn in Stark County, Ohio, Hoover spent her childhood in a generations-old family farmhouse overflowing with books.
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