Rocket Boys
Homer H. Hickam
number of voters: 4
percentage of voters who finished the book: 25
highest rating: 8
lowest rating: 7
average rating: 7.4375
percentage of readers who, upon reading this book, became nostalgic about a time before they were born: 100
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There is a place you have never been, never will go. This place doesn’t exist anymore, hasn’t existed since, perhaps, before you were born. Some of the people who lived there, then, have died; eventually, the rest of them will too. But this place, though gone, will not be forgotten.
Herein lies the wonder of a book: a time and place immortalized by the written word before it is lost forever in the memories of those who were there but are now gone themselves.
And so, we enjoyed Rocket Boys for its glimpse into history: Coalwood, West Virginia, circa 1950, a small mining town seemingly far-removed from the space race between the U.S. and the Russians, the story of one boy, Sonny Hickam, born a coal miner’s son, who raised himself on rockets and grew up to be an aerospace engineer.
Books like Rocket Boys are the reason we read. They provide windows through which we can peer into the lives and times we might otherwise never have known.
