Double Trouble Plus One

About the Book

In the style of Dan Wakefield and Maya Angelou, Indiana author David Hovious uses the autobiographical approach to effectively portray rural life of a poor white family in Southern Indiana in the 1940s and early 1950s, with stories based on fact.

An era of unheated bedrooms, yards full of old cars that were constantly being repaired, $6.00 per month rental houses down by the bridge, and unmarried Mom going to the city to get a job, and bringing back a new baby brother.

The book opens with the birth of twins in 1935, moves through their school years, discovering girls, going away to serve in the armed forces, and continues to relate events which occurred until he reached the age of 22.

Hovious introduces invented ways poor people found to entertain themselves and describes scrambling for a dime to keep the family going.  While the manuscript is an accurate portrayal of a group of people of a certain era, it is also entertaining, a humorous account, told in an easy-to-read style.

The reader will laugh aloud while reading this book.  For instance, as Earl moves his family from one town to the other, the reader sees his possessions fall from the back of the truck one piece at a time.  The scene is hilarious even when the reader knows that Earl didn’t have many possessions before the move and will have much less after he loses them along the road.

“When he took off at the railroad bridge, one of the mattresses was falling off the trailer.  It got hooked on the side of the bridge, which pulled it the rest of the way off, and tore it wide open.  So we stopped and picked it up, and put it on top of the Model A.  By then, we had almost as much stuff inside and on top of the Model A as Earl had on the trailer…”

The reader will also be filled with compassion while reading the story of the basketball awards banquet, where the boy wins his stripe and his letter, but has no sweater to sew them on to.

This picture of life of very poor families in Southern Indiana at that time is accurate.  DOUBLE TROUBLE PLUS ONE is filled with slap stick humor, and also filled with pathos.  It is a book of pure reading pleasure.

About the Author

David Hovious was born in 1935 on a poor Indiana farm, the oldest of twin boys. The stories related in the novel, DOUBLE TROUBLE PLUS ONE, are based on fact. He quit school at the age of 17, and with his twin, joined the Army. He served with the US Army for 5½ years, and was honorably discharged with the rank of Sargent First Class. Mr. Hovious was involved in construction, a management consultant for mobile home parks, and trustee for the Fifth District Federal Bankruptcy Court in Chicago. Retiring to Florida on disability in 1991, he turned his hand to writing. He has become a prolific writer of poetry, many pertaining to his childhood. Married to his second wife for 39 years, he is the father to four daughters, grandfather of seven, and great-grandfather of seven.