Born on April 5, 1935 in Stark County in northeastern Ohio, H. M. Hoover grew up with her two brothers and sister in a beautiful and peaceful rural setting. Her parents, both teachers and amateur naturalists, owned an old country house surrounded by fields, orchards, and woodland. She reports that "There were few strangers . . . I took for granted that most people could walk a mile and still be on family property or a neighbor's land across the fence." This sense of stability, mixed, perhaps, with a certain provincialism, is common to a number of the characters in her novels. On the eastern horizon, however, Hoover "could . . .

Due in part to her parents' influence, Hoover grew up with...