2010 ► Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam, Jr.
| Book Reviews |
"A thoroughly charming memoir...[an] eloquent evocation of a lost time and place...Mr. Hickam builds a story of overcoming obstacles worthy of Frank Capra, especially in its sweetness and honest sentimentality." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
"[Hickam] is a very adept storyteller...It's a good bet this is the story as he told it to himself. It is a lovely one, and in the career of Homer H. Hickam, Jr., who prevailed over the facts of his life to become a NASA engineer training astronauts for space walks, that made all the difference." --The New York Times Book Review"
Hickam has a great story to tell...Rocket Boys will certainly strike a nostalgic chord in anyone who grew up during the early days of the space race, but its appeal goes beyond that. . . . Hickam's recollections of small-town America in the last years of small-town America are so cinematic that even those of us who didn't grow up there might imagine we did." --The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A stirring tale that offers something unusual these days...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
"Unforgettable...Unlike so many memoirs, this book brings to life more than one man's experiences. It brings to life the lost town of Coalwood, W.Va." --USA Today
"Wonderful...the action is nonstop." --The Washington Post Book World
"Escalating tension, danger and excitement." --The New York Times Book Review
"An eloquent evocation of a lost time and place...A story of overcoming obstacles worthy of Frank Capra." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
Amazon.com
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Booklist
In 1957, the national panic set off by Sputnik I reached into the hollows of Coalwood, West Virginia, the setting for this affecting story. The second son of a coal mine's manager, teenage Homer went bonkers about rockets, listening to Sputnik I's beep, watching it streak across the night sky, and yearning to work for Wernher von Braun. So he formed a rocket club, whose adventures in launching the Auk series of rockets, from their first attempt that burned up Mom's fence to the last that flew six miles up, form the frame of the memoir. The content comes from the conflict and gossip generated by his rocket compadres' activities, and if dialogue is remembered suspiciously accurately and entrances and exits occur with too dramatically effective timing, the narrative still rings true. Hickam's profiles of Coalwood's people (some, he admits, are composites) invite cheers and boos: boos for brother Jim and his thick-browed gridiron buddies, always threatening to pound on Sonny and his four-eyed friends; cheers for rocketeer Quentin, surely a composite geek from central casting whose word of approval is prodigious. Even if Hickam stretched the strict truth to metamorphose his memories into Stand by Melike material for Hollywood (and a movie has been made, with release set for late this year), the embellishing only converts what is a good story into an absorbing, rapidly readable one that is unsentimental but artful about adolescence, high school, and family life. Could generate intense interest. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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