He was elated, but the next two dozen stories he wrote were all rejected. At 17, he sold a Western story for $27.50. In the fall he went back to school, writing feature articles and a regular column for the school paper. The following summer he worked on the Tacoma Ledger as a copy and office boy, doing some actual reporting as well. In May of his senior year, he dropped out. A classmate remembered him rushing into the 'news shack' behind the school, shouting: 'Stop the presses! I've got a scoop!' (Brian Herbert, Dreamer of Dune. He was an enthusiastic reporter on the student newspaper. But his career as a writer had already been launched.

He had a checkered career at Tacoma's Lincoln High School, including dropped and failed classes. At 8 he is said to have jumped on a table and shouted, 'I wanna be an author.' His parents were binge alcoholics, and young Frank often had to care for his only sibling, Patty Lou, who was 13 years younger. Herbert's childhood included camping, hunting, fishing, and digging clams. According to unsubstantiated family lore, during Prohibition, Frank Senior, Eileen, and another couple built and ran the legendary Spanish Castle Ballroom, a speakeasy and dancehall off of Highway 99 between Seattle and Tacoma. His mother, Eileen Marie McCarthy, was from a large Irish family in Wisconsin.

Herbert's father, Frank Patrick Herbert Sr., had a varied career including operating a bus line, selling electrical equipment, and serving as a state motorcycle patrolman. Eventually, the socialist aspects of the community faded away, and the Herberts ran a general store there. The Burley communards printed their own currency, paid everyone an identical salary, and championed gender equality. His paternal grandparents had come west in 1905 to join Burley Colony in Kitsap County, one of many utopian communes springing up in Washington State beginning in the 1890s. Joseph Hospital in Tacoma on October 8, 1920. But his 1965 science fiction novel Dune, considered by many to be the best science fiction novel ever written, won him the devotion of fans all over the world, launched a franchise that lasted for decades, and earned him millions, which he spent with gusto.įrank Patrick Herbert Jr.

He was hounded by creditors as he struggled alongside his wife Beverly to support a family.

For years, he wrote fiction with limited success while working as a journalist. Since childhood, Tacoma-born Frank Herbert had been determined to become a published author.

Frank herbert