The Coalwood Way (The Coalwood Series #2) - Hardcover

Hickam, Homer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385335164 ISBN 13: 9780385335164

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2000

Synopsis

It's fall, 1959, and Homer "Sonny" Hickam and his fellow Rocket Boys are in their senior year at Big Creek High, launching handbuilt rockets that soar thousands of feet into the West Virginia sky. But in a season traditionally marked by celebrations of the spirit, Coalwood finds itself at a painful crossroads.

The strains can be felt within the Hickam home, where a beleaguered HomerSr. is resorting to a daring but risky plan to keep the mine alive, and his wife Elsie is feeling increasingly isolated from both her family and the townspeople. And Sonny, despite a blossoming relationship with a local girl whose dreams are as big as his, finds his own mood repeatedly darkened by an unexplainable sadness.

Eager to rally the town's spirits and make her son's final holiday season at home a memorable one, Elsie enlists Sonny and the Rocket Boys' aid in making the Coalwood Christmas Pageant the best ever. But trouble at the mine and the arrival of a beautiful young outsider threaten to tear the community apart when it most needs to come together. And when disaster strikes at home, and Elsie's beloved pet squirrel escapes under his watch, Sonny realizes that helping his town and redeeming himself in his mother's eyes may be a bigger-and more rewarding-challenge than he has ever faced.

The result is pure storytelling magic- a tale of small-town parades and big-hearted preachers, the timeless love of families and unforgettable adventures of boyhood friends-that could only come from the man who brought the world Rocket Boys

About this title

About the Author

Homer Hickam was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia. The author of Torpedo Junction, Rocket Boys, and the novelBack to the Moon, he is a retired NASA engineer, a scuba instructor, and a consultant on a variety of aerospace projects. He lives with his wife in Huntsville, Alabama-Rocket City, USA.

From the Back Cover

Recalling a lost era--the transition between small-town life and the dawning of the new technological age--[Homer Hickam] brings his American hometown to life with vivid images, appealing characters and considerable literary magic.

"Hickam's plain and tender stories of his first crush, losing his grandfather and craving his dad's love are truly beautiful and haunting. Bottom Line: The Rocket Boy soars again."
-- People Magazine

Reviews

In his bestselling memoir, Rocket Boys (which became the 1999 movie October Sky), former NASA engineer Hickam looked back at the mining town of Coalwood, W.Va., when the 1957 ascent of Sputnik prompted Sonny and his teenage pals to launch their own rockets and aim at the stars. This sequel is set in 1959, when Sonny is a high school senior, still sending up rockets at "Cape Coalwood," at local launches that became full-scale social events with numerous spectators: "Even the Big Creek cheerleaders came, dressed in full uniform." Hickam digs deeper into his own family life, recalling an ambivalent relationship with his father, the superintendent of the local mine: "My dad was, in many ways, [a] general, plotting strategy and tactics against an unyielding foe, the mine itself." Hearing the constant miner's cough in her own house, Hickam's mother, Elsie, wants to leave the coal dust-covered community for the "fresh, clean air" of Myrtle Beach, since "she knew very well lung spots never got smaller, only bigger," but Homer Sr. is determined to stay and save the mine. Amid the resulting household tension, Sonny suffers from an inexplicable sadness, despite his growing relationship with a local girl and his various science and writing projects. His recollections are occasionally reminiscent of the youthful exploits in tales by Jean Shepherd and Ray Bradbury, but Hickam's voice is his own. Recalling a lost eraDthe transition between small-town life and the dawning of the new technological ageDhe brings his American hometown to life with vivid images, appealing characters and considerable literary magic. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this follow-up to his acclaimed Rocket Boys, retired NASA engineer Hickam recounts tensions in his household during his last Christmas before college, even as the Rocket Boys are drafted to help celebrate the holidays with a really big bang.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This sequel to Rocket Boys (1998), which Hollywood parlayed into the movie October Sky, continues the author's life story with his senior year in high school, 1959, in the declining West Virginia mining town of Coalwood. The rocket club, featured in the last book, is pushed to the periphery, and the focus shifts to Hickam's teenage problems, which include his parents, girls, and a sadness whose cause he cannot divine. For advice, he consults his rocket-club pals and a minister, improbably named Little Richard, but they offer slight help. This memoir's main theme is the happenings in Coalwood and how they affect the Hickam household. For Coalwood was a coal-company town, and Hickam's father was the boss of the mine, and resented for it. In addition, Hickam's mother suffers a series of social reversals, and the dinner table soon becomes a tense, taciturn arena. The father wants to dig more coal; the mother wants to move away from Coalwood; and Homer wants to take Ginger Dantzler to the Christmas formal dance. Hickam develops these mini-dramas with anecdotes that are by turns lively, pensive, wry, or self-deprecating, yet none combine in a structural way to reach resolution. The memoir simply stops (after an interruption by a vicious crime) with Christmas carols. Although lacking the strong theme (winning a science fair) that lent Rocket Boys its charm, this profile of a town and a time partakes of a gritty nostalgia that will still entrance Hickam's fans. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

OF ALL THE lessons I learned when I built my rockets, the most important were not about chemistry, physics, or metallurgy, but of virtues, sins, and other true things that shape us as surely as rivers carve valleys, or rain melts mountains, or currents push apart the sea. I would learn these lessons at a time when Coalwood, the mining town where I had lived my entire life, was just beginning to fade away. Yet, as the fall of 1959 began, and the leaves on the trees in the forests that surrounded us began to explode in spectacular color, Coalwood's men still walked with a trudging grace to and from the vast, deep mine, and its women bustled in and out of the company stores and fought the coal dust that drifted into theit homes. In the dark old schools, the children learned and the teachers taught, and, in snowy white churches built on hillside cuts, the preachers preached, and God, who we had no doubt was also a West Virginian, was surely doing His work in heaven, too At the abandoned slack dump we called Cape Coalwood, rockets still leapt into the air, and boyish voices yet echoed between ancient, worn mountains beneath a pale and watchful sky. Coalwood endured as it always had, but a wheel was turning that would change nearly everything, and no one, not even my father, would be able to stop it. When that brittle parchment autumn turned into our deepest, whitest winter, this and many other lessons would be taught. Though they were hard and sometimes cruel things to learn, they were true, and true things, as the people of Coalwood saw fit to teach me, are always filled with a shining glory.



To me, there was no better time to launch a rocket than in the fall, especially a West Virginia fall. There seemed to be a cool, dry energy in the air that filled us with a renewed sense of hope and optimism. I had always believed that our rockets were lifted as much by our dreams as burning propellant, and as the lazy summer faded and a northerly wind swept down on us with its lively breath, anything seemed possible. It was also when the school year started and I always felt an excitement stir within me at the thought of learning new and wonderful things. Fall had other marvels, too. At the Cape, we were often treated to V-shaped flotillas of migrating Canadian geese, bound from the far north to places we had only read about or imagined. We always stopped our rocket preparations to gaze longingly at the great creatures as they winged their way high overhead, and to listen to their joyful honking that seemed to be calling us to join them. "If only we could," Sherman said once to my comment. "Even for just a moment, to look down on our mountains and see them the same as angels." Sherman always liked to remind us that we lived in a beautiful place and I guess we did, although sometimes it was easy to forget, especially since we'd never known anywhere else.

Once, a rare snow goose, as purely white as moonbeams, landed on the old slack dump, perhaps fooled by the reflection from the slick surface of the coal tailings. We gathered around the great strutting bird, awed by the sight of her. Then I noticed that her wing tips were as black as the faces of Coalwood miners after a shift. O'Dell said the reason for the black tips was so the geese could see each other inside a white cloud. O'Dell knew a lot about animals so I believed his explanation, but it got me off to thinking. How did the snow geese decide what colors their feathers would be? Did they all get together up north somewhere a million years ago and take a vote? It was a mystery and the snow goose made no comment. She just looked annoyed. When she tired of us gawking at her, she flapped her wings and continued her journey, and I confess I was relieved. I knew the snow goose did not belong in Coalwood. Some people, especially my mother, said neither did I.

Our first rocket of the fall was Auk XXII-E. A serious little rocket, it began its journey with a mighty spout of flame and tur-moil and its shock wave rattled our wooden blockhouse as it climbed. I ran outside with the other boys, but no matter how much I strained my eyes, I couldn't see it. All I could see were clouds that went, as far as I knew, all the way up to heaven. The seconds ticked by. We had never lost one of our rockets, but I was beginning to wonder if maybe this one was going to be our first. If it had fallen on Rocket Mountain, buried itself into the soft black West Virginia loam up there, maybe we had missed it. "Time, O'Dell," I called nervously.

O'Dell looked at the stopwatch he'd borrowed last year from one of the coal company industrial engineers and forgotten to give back. "I think it's still flying," he said.

"Then where is it?" I demanded. We couldn't lose it. Like every rocket we launched, it held answers we had to know.

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385335164
• ISBN 13: 9780385335164
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336