Rocket Boys

Homer Hickam

Apr 1999 · Coalwood Book 1 · Sold by Dell

About this ebook

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “nostalgic and entertaining memoir” (People) about a group of young men who dreamed of launching rockets into outer space—the inspiration for the film October Sky

“A message of hope in an age of cynicism. . . . Perhaps we all have something to learn from a half-dozen boys who dared to reject all limitations . . . and resolved to send dreams roaring to the sky.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune

It was 1957, the year Sputnik raced across the Appalachian sky, and the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia, was slowly dying.

Faced with an uncertain future, Homer Hickam nurtured a dream: to send rockets into outer space. The introspective son of the mine’s superintendent and a mother determined to get him out of Coalwood forever, Homer fell in with a group of misfits who learned not only how to turn scraps of metal into sophisticated rockets but how to sustain their hope in a town that swallowed its men alive.

As the boys began to light up the tarry skies with their flaming projectiles and dreams of glory, Coalwood, and the Hickams, would never be the same.

With the grace of a natural storyteller, NASA engineer Homer Hickam paints a warm, vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia mining town of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, when anything was possible. Lush and lyrical, Rocket Boys is a uniquely American memoir: A powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the end of the 1950s, of a mother’s love and a father’s fears, and of growing up and getting out.

Ratings and reviews

This is a book that i was assigned for my summer reading and i didn't think that i would like it that well, but it's actually very good. I would definately recomend it

October Sky, by Homer H. Hickam, Jr. is one of the most interesting autobiography I have read. It uses a combination of life hard-ships to life lessons, from the worst of Homer's experiences and those around him. The story is based from the POV of Homer himself and it features his life goal to become a part of the engineers in Cape Caneveral. He achieves this thru motivation, and help from friends, family, and workers of the town's company, which is the center of all in their city. The boys are discouraged many times and almost lose their motivation to continue on. There were select members of their group, friends and family who picked them back up. They truely would be living a very different life if not for them. It was a very motivational story for me, and I think the core theme in this book that everyone who reads this is this: Go for whatever you want to do in life, don't let anyone stop you, you and only you can truely understand what you want to do in your later years. Don't let anyone stop you, go for it, no matter how out of reach it may seem. I would highly recommend this for any person, it is a very good read.

Good book for boys who are good readers. The subject matter will interest boys, and the fact that it is a true story will inspire them. I loved it, gave it to my teenage son to read and he loved it. I have recommended it to the better readers in middle school who enjoyed it. Juxt make sure that they read well enough to not get flustered. Big words and advanced concepts.

About the author

Homer Hickam was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia. The author of Torpedo Junction (a Military History Book-of-the-Month Club selection) as well as numerous articles for such publications as Air & Space/Smithsonian and American History Illustrated, he is a NASA payload training manager for the International Space Station program and lives in Huntsville, Alabama.