Rocket Boys

 

by Homer H. Hickam, Jr. (read by Tom Stechschulte)

 

 

I read this book years ago when it first came out and really enjoyed. So, when I saw it in an Audible sale pile, I decided that it was time for a re-read.

Homer Hickam, Jr., former NASA engineer, grew up in one of the company owned coal towns of West Virginia. His father worked in the mine first as a miner and then later as a manager. With the launch of Sputnik in 1957, young Homer decided that he was going to work for Werner von Braun. Along with his high school buddies, he decided to build a rocket. Much easier said than done in the days before the internet and not knowing even the basics of rocket science (i.e., the third law of thermodynamic: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). With minimal resources, the boys had to teach themselves the physics, the math and the chemistry they would rely on to launch multiple small rockets.

Rocket Boys is Hickam's memoir of the building of the rockets and of winning the National Science Fair. Yet at the same time, this coming of age story is also about the imminent death of the coal mining industry in West Virginia and of the town of Coalwood in particular. Rocket Boys is the first of three memoirs about his hometown.

While the story is hard and harsh, Hickam's writing is beautiful, positive and uplifting. This is not some whinging celebrity's "boo-hoo I've had a horrible life story take pity on me" kind of memoir that unfortunately proliferate the bookshelves these days. Hickam doesn't whine or complain; he just tells it like it is. We need more memoirs like this, the memoirs of ordinary people doing ordinary jobs with extraordinary results.

Four stars