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Rocket Boys: A Memoir (The Coalwood Series #1), by Homer Hickam
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"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.
- Sales Rank: #64225 in Books
- Color: Multicolor
- Published on: 1998-09-15
- Released on: 1998-09-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.28" h x 1.23" w x 5.53" l, 1.13 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 384 pages
Amazon.com Review
Inspired by Werner von Braun and his Cape Canaveral team, 14-year-old Homer Hickam decided in 1957 to build his own rockets. They were his ticket out of Coalwood, West Virginia, a mining town that everyone knew was dying--everyone except Sonny's father, the mine superintendent and a company man so dedicated that his family rarely saw him. Hickam's smart, iconoclastic mother wanted her son to become something more than a miner and, along with a female science teacher, encouraged the efforts of his grandiosely named Big Creek Missile Agency. He grew up to be a NASA engineer and his memoir of the bumpy ride toward a gold medal at the National Science Fair in 1960--an unprecedented honor for a miner's kid--is rich in humor as well as warm sentiment. Hickam vividly evokes a world of close communal ties in which a storekeeper who sold him saltpeter warned, "Listen, rocket boy. This stuff can blow you to kingdom come." Hickam is candid about the deep disagreements and tensions in his parents' marriage, even as he movingly depicts their quiet loyalty to each other. The portrait of his ultimately successful campaign to win his aloof father's respect is equally affecting. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Great memoirs must balance the universal and the particular. Too much of the former makes it overly familiar; too much of the latter makes readers ask what the story has to do with them. In his debut, Hickam, a retired NASA engineer, walks that line beautifully. On one level, it's the story of a teenage boy who learns about dedication, responsibility, thermodynamics and girls. On the other hand, it's about a dying way of life in a coal town where the days are determined by the rhythms of the mine and the company that controls everything and everybody. Hickam's father is Coalwood, W.Va.'s mine superintendent, whose devotion to the mine is matched only by his wife's loathing for it. When Sputnik inspires "Sonny" with an interest in rockets, she sees it not as a hobby but as a way to escape the mines. After an initial, destructive try involving 12 cherry bombs, Sonny and his cronies set up the Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA). From Auk I (top altitude, six feet), through Auk XXXI (top altitude, 31,000 feet), the boys experiment with nozzles, fins and, most of all, fuel, graduating from a basic black powder to "rocket candy" (melted potassium chlorate and sugar) to "Zincoshine" (zinc, sulfur, moonshine). But Coalwood is the real star, here. Teachers, clergy, machinists, town gossips, union, management, everyone become co-conspirators in the BCMA's explosive three-year project. Hickam admits to taking poetic license in combining characters and with the sequence of events, and if there is any flaw, it's that the people and the narrative seem a little too perfect. But no matter how jaded readers have become by the onslaught of memoirs, none will want to miss the fantastic voyage of BCMA, Auk and Coalwood. First serial to Life. 10-city author tour. (Sept.) FYI: Rocket Boys is currently in production at Universal, which plans to release it later this year.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Hickam recalls his distinguished NASA career, which all started when he saw Sputnik as a little boy and began designing and launching homemade rockets. With a ten-city author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Who Knew There Were Rocket Boys Everywhere in 1959
By Charles S. Funk
I have read at most a half dozen books in my life that would earn five stars. This was close. This is a touching memoir of a young man's rites of passage and gives an insight into his family environment and more. That insight is richly developed and necessary to understand the things that drove him to fulfill his passion. I probably share a greater interest and identify more clearly with Homer because I am a year older and indeed built rockets when I was in high school, spurred on by the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. Like Homer, I had failures but I also had access to resources he did not including engineers at a company that manufactured anti-aircraft missiles. Like Homer, I entered a local science fair and won in my class and went to the state fair. Like Homer, I encountered projects worthy of doctoral dissertations that had obviously consumed hundreds if not thousands of 1959 dollars. I won 4th place overall.
I had to share that to help anyone reading this understand better why this book was a satisfying read. It may not be such for everyone.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Memoir of a young man who builds rockets
By Mary Boyd
A warmly and well written memoir by a man who grew up in a small coal-mining town in West Virginia who with 4 of his high school classmates learns how to build rockets and enter a national science fair. Every chapter is full of funny and unexpected happenings. The story teaches about how science experiments are done, and how to face up to failure over and over until one succeeds. It also shows the power of a great teacher and how a community can rally behind individuals.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A fascinating read.
By AArne
I remember seeing Sputnik pass overhead in a north to south orbit as I stood awed with my buddy Jackie in my neighbor's yard.
Reading the adventures of another boy in the same time period brought the realization that although Massachusetts and West Virginia are miles apart we shared multiple experiences. A joy to read and remember.
See all 906 customer reviews...
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