Book Description
Rocket Boys - "Until I began to build and
launch rockets, I didn't know my home town was at war with
itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in
a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would
live our lives. I didn't know that if a girl broke your
heart, another girl, virtuous at least in spirit, could mend
it on the same night. And I didn't know that the enthalpy
decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into
jet kinetic energy if a divergent passage was added. The
other boys discovered their own truths when we built our
rockets, but those were mine."
So begins Homer "Sonny" Hickam Jr.'s
extraordinary memoir of life in Coalwood, West Virginia-a
hard-scrabble little company town where the only things that
mattered were coal mining and high school football. But in
1957, after the Soviet satellite Sputnik shot across the
Appalachian sky, Sonny and his teenaged friends decided to do
their bit for the U.S. space race by building their own
rockets---and Coalwood, Sonny and A powerful story of growing
up and of getting out, of a mother's love and a father's
fears, Homer Hickam's memoir Rocket Boys proves, like Angela's
Ashes and Russell Baker's Growing Up before it,
that the right storyteller and the right story can touch
readers hearts and enchant their souls.
In a town where the only things that mattered were
coal-mining and high-school football, where the future was
regarded with more fear than hope, a young man watched the
Soviet satellite Sputnik race across the West Virginia
sky--and soon found his future in the stars. In 1957, Homer
H. "Sonny" Hickam, Jr., and a handful of his
friends were inspired to start designing and launching the
home-made rockets that would change their lives and their
town forever.
Looking back after a distinguished NASA career, Hickam
shares the story of his youth, taking readers into the life
of the little mining town of Coalwood and the boys who would
come to embody its dreams. Step by step, with the help (and
occasional hindrance) of a collection of unforgettable
characters, the boys learn not only how to turn scrap into
sophisticated rockets that fly miles into the sky, but how to
sustain their dreams as they dared to imagine a life beyond
its borders in a town that the postwar boom was passing by.
Rocket Boys has already caught the eye of
Hollywood: The producer of Field of Dreams is now
working to produce a major motion picture in time for next
year's Academy Awards.
A uniquely endearing story with universal themes of class,
family, coming of age, and the thrill of discovery, Homer
Hickam's Rocket Boys is evocative, vivid storytelling
at its most magical.
