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's memoir of his life in the hardscrabble little town of Coalwood, West Virginia where the only things that mattered were coal mining and high school football until he and his teenaged friends decided to build rockets in the hope they might someday work for the legendary Dr. Wernher von Braun. Dramatic and moving, The Rocket Boys takes readers into the life of the little town as remembered by a man who, despite all odds, grew up to realize his boyhood ambition of being a NASA scientist and engineer. It is a true story that recalls the impish humor of Tom Sawyer, the inventive optimism of Tom Swift, and the grim reality of Angela's Ashes.

The book compassionately recreates a family almost hopelessly torn between a mother's love, a father's duty, and the dreams of their son. After a series of rocket explosions and misfires, the industrious old town, beset by a sudden economic misery, splits between those who encourage the teenagers they call "the rocket boys" and those who want to stop them. Sonny's father, the mine superintendent, lines up on the side against the boys but soon finds himself engulfed in a larger battle that will determine the future of the town he loves. Step by step, with the help of a wonderful collection of West Virginia characters - miners, machinists, housewives, preachers, bootleggers, and teachers - the rocket boys learn not only how to build sophisticated rockets that fly miles into the sky, but how to sustain their optimism in a town where only a tough and hardened people have survived. Along the way toward winning national honors for their rocket designs, the boys also learn about life and love and the startling fact that Coalwood, the only home they've ever known, is dying.

Homer Hickam's Web Site is located at www.homerhickam.com.  Visit this awesome site when you get a chance and tell 'em we sent ya!