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Summary
Summary
Homer Hickam won the praise of critics and the devotion of readers with his first two memoirs set in the hardscrabble mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. The New York Times crowned his first book, the #1 national bestseller October Sky , "an eloquent evocation ... a thoroughly charming memoir." And People called The Coalwood Way , Hickam's follow-up to October Sky , "a heartwarmer ... truly beautiful and haunting."
Now Homer Hickam continues his extraordinary story with Sky of Stone , dazzling us with exquisite storytelling as he takes us back to that remarkable small town we first came to know and love in October Sky .
In the summer of '61, Homer "Sonny" Hickam, a year of college behind him, was dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny could reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother was 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--and the townspeople are in conflict over the future of the town.
Sonny's mother, Elsie, has commanded her son to spend the summer in Coalwood to support his father. But within hours, Sonny realizes two things: His father, always cool and distant with his second son, doesn't want him there ... and his parents' marriage has begun to unravel. For Sonny, so begins a summer of discovery--of love, betrayal, and most of all, of a brooding mystery that threatens to destroy his father and his town.
Cut off from his college funds by his father, Sonny finds himself doing the unimaginable: taking a job as a "track-laying man," the toughest in the mine. Moving out to live among the miners, Sonny is soon dazzled by a beautiful older woman who wants to be the mine's first female engineer.
And as the days of summer grow shorter, Sonny finds himself changing in surprising ways, taking the first real steps toward adulthood. But it's a journey he can make only by peering into the mysterious heart of Coalwood itself, and most of all, by unraveling the story of a man's death and a father's secret.
In Sky of Stone , Homer Hickam looks down the corridors of his past with love, humor, and forgiveness, brilliantly evoking a close-knit community where everyone knows everything about each other's lives--except the things that matter most. Sky of Stone is a memoir that reads like a novel, mesmerizing us with rich language, narrative drive, and sheer storytelling genius.
Author Notes
Homer H. Hickam Jr. was born in 1943 in Coalwood, Va. and earned a degree in industrial engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1964. He served in the U.S. Army from 1967 to 1972, rising to the rank of captain. Hickam also served as an engineer at the Army Missile Command in Huntsville, Ala. and with the Army Corps of Engineers in West Germany. He has been with NASA since 1981.
Homer Hickam is a rare combination of practicing scientist and literate storyteller. As a NASA trainer he has taught astronauts to walk on the moon. As an author he has written a poignant, personal memoir about how he became an aerospace engineer.
In Rocket Boys (1998) Hickam tells how his fascination with rockets began in the 50s Sputnik space race, developed into a teenage rocket club, and led to Hickam's winning a gold and a silver medal at the National Science Fair in 1960. His inspiring story, told with honesty and humor, had its beginnings as an article in Smithsonian's Air and Space magazine in 1994 and is being adapted as a motion picture.
Hickam's other book Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War Off America's East Coast, 1942 (1989) is also praised as a literary achievement. It is a fascinating, fast-paced narrative that draws on his background as a scuba diver and explorer of sunken ships. Hickam has also written several shipwreck articles for major magazines.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Lucky readers of Rocket Boys (Delacorte, 1998), which became Hollywood's hit October Sky, will welcome this final volume of Hickam's trilogy about his youth in Coalwood, WV. He recounts how he headed off to Virginia Tech in 1960 to become an engineer so he could go to work for Wernher Von Braun. During his freshman year, his mother realized her dream of living in Myrtle Beach and Hickam, then 18, hoped for a summer of sand and girls. Instead, she sent him home because his father, a coal-mine superintendent, was in some kind of serious trouble that she didn't explain and needed him. Hickam recalls feeling like an outsider after a year away but, in need of money, hired on at the mine over his father's objections. The writing is so vivid and immediate that readers will feel as if they've spent the summer with Hickam as he learns much about his distant father, has a crush on an older female mining engineer with big plans for herself, and ultimately helps to solve the mystery of his dad's trouble. All of his friends and neighbors will be like old friends, thanks to these colorful portraits. With a sharp eye and an ability to laugh at himself, Hickam offers a reading experience that is every bit as good as the first two. This coming-of-age tale celebrates the virtues of community and family without a hint of preachiness, and provides a rousing good story into the bargain.-Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Retired NASA engineer Hickam became a minor mass market celebrity in 1994 after a last-minute 2,000-word filler for Air & Space magazine (he spent three hours writing about launching homemade rockets in 1950s Coalwood, W.Va.) brought an avalanche of phone calls and letters. He expanded the article into 1998's bestselling Rocket Boys, filmed as the critically acclaimed October Sky (2001). Four hundred schools now use his memoirs in their curricula. The latest episode takes place in 1961 during young Hickam's first summer vacation from college, shortly after a foreman's death at the mine that Hickam's father supervises. Hickam (nicknamed Sonny) plans to read Robert A. Heinlein and meet girls in Myrtle Beach where his mother, Elsie, has a new dreamhouse, but Elsie insists he return home since his father is being accused of negligence in the foreman's death. Stuck in Coalwood, Sonny takes a difficult job laying track. Amid Sonny's travails with unrequited love, the track-laying competition and being stonewalled by his father and the locals when he asks anything about the death, state and federal inspectors arrive to investigate. Hickam prolongs the suspense in this cleverly constructed, richly detailed mystery peppered with colloquial dialogue and vivid characters. This pleasing book only reinforces his oeuvre. (Oct. 9) Forecast: A preview excerpt in The Coalwood Way paperback (Sept.), an author tour (including a keynote speech at the Ohio Library Council Conference), promotion at Coalwood's Annual October Sky Festival, an unabridged audiobook and large print editions, and Hickam's popularity promise skyrocketing sales. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Hickam's third installment in his bestselling memoir (The Coalwood Way, 2000, etc.) about coal country West Virginia is, pleasingly, more leathery than the sentimental earlier material as he attains his college years and must return to Coalwood under difficult circumstances. Hickam has gone off to Virginia Polytech to pursue his dreams of rocket science but is required to return to Coalwood, his hometown that lived and, unfortunately, breathed coal. It is only for the summer, but Hickman's none too happy to be back in Coalwood, despite his obvious affection for the place. His father is under a cloud for a deadly mining mishap; his mother has moved down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in what looks like a potential marital split; and Hickam must take a job in the mines to pay for an auto accident, which means he must join the union, to his parents' horror. His father pretty much turns him out, but there are bright lines to the story as well: a track-laying contest, a girl named Rita, and the story behind his father's reticence in talking about the night of the accident that killed his friend. Hickam's dulcet voice is a soothing counterpoint to the familial and social woes of Coalwood, paternalistic company town or not, and despite the steel bosses and the secrets of the tight-knit town and the brutality of life in the mine-something made very real here by Hickam's being right down there-the tale unfolds like a bedtime story. That things turn out for the best makes this an appealing capstone. Hickam ends with a short chapter on his life after leaving Coalwood that is way too rushed-how jarring "Pleiku" and "Dak To" sound in this context, or learning that Hickam worked only at the fringes of rocket science. This concluding volume has the feel of literary durability about it, even more than the much-ballyhooed Rocket Boys (1998).
Booklist Review
This is Hickam's third memoir about growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia, following the highly popular Rocket Boys (1998) and The Coalwood Way (2000). It's the summer of 1961, and the author finds himself doing what he vowed never to do: working in the coal mine. There's major trouble looming: investigators are coming to Coalwood to conduct an inquest into Hickam Sr.'s possible negligence on the night that a foreman died in a gas explosion. Hickam Jr. has his own anxieties, of course, which drive his urge to escape the town's hollows and his tense relationship with his father. A grumpy and resentful Hickam Jr. takes the union pledge, and after the usual verbal tussle with Dad, descends to the depths, looking up at the "sky of stone." Surprise of surprises, he discovers a certain reward in doing the work, augmented by betting laid on a competition between his crew and a set of bruisers from over the mountain on who can lay the most track. Meanwhile, Hickam Sr. seems doomed following several hearings, but rescue arrives with the deus ex machina appearance of Captain Laird, the man who originally hired Hickam Sr. and who now sets all aright. The author candidly announces that he has "rearranged and compressed" events, a shaping that provides drama and accentuates the universally felt diffidence engendered by returning to and breaking from one's parental influences. --Gilbert Taylor
Library Journal Review
In this follow-up to his moving October Sky, Hickam reexamines his first year home from college, when trouble at the mine threatens his family. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.