Coalwood Series

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Rocket Boys and The Coalwood Way transports us back to his West Virginia hometown and the summer that nearly destroyed the close-knit community in this “beautifully executed” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) memoir.

“Vivid and alive . . . Hickam has made [Coalwood] live again in his writing.”—The New York Times Book Review

In the summer of ’61, Homer “Sonny” Hickam, a year of college behind him, is dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny can reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother is spending the summer, a telephone call sends him back to the place he thought he had escaped: the gritty coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. There, Sonny’s father, the mine’s superintendent, has been accused of negligence in a man’s death. Sonny’s mother, Elsie, has ordered her son to spend the summer in Coalwood to support his father. For Sonny, so begins a season of discovery—a time when he will learn about love, loss, and a closely guarded secret that threatens to destroy his father and his town.

As the days of summer grow shorter, Sonny finds himself taking the first real steps toward manhood. But it’s a journey he can make only by unraveling the story of a man’s death and a father’s secret—the mysteries that lie at the very heart of Coalwood.

In this “irresistible” memoir “as compelling and rousing as a NASA liftoff” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Rocket Boys takes us deeper into the soul of his West Virginia hometown during a pivotal moment that irrevocably changed its unique way of life.

“Another classic coming-of-age tale . . . the rocket boy soars again.”—People

Fall, 1959. Homer “Sonny” Hickam and his fellow Rocket Boys are in their senior year at Big Creek High, and the town of Coalwood finds itself at a painful crossroads.

The strains can be felt within the Hickam home, where Homer Sr. struggles to save the mine, and his wife, Elsie, is feeling increasingly isolated from both her family and the townspeople. Sonny, despite a blossoming relationship with a local girl, finds his own mood darkened by an unexplainable sadness.

Then, with the holidays approaching, trouble at the mine and the arrival of a beautiful young outsider bring unexpected changes in both the Hickam family and the town of Coalwood.

#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.