Homer Hickam won the praise of critics and the devotion of readers with his first two memoirs set in the hardscrabble mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. The New York Times crowned his first book, the #1 national bestseller October Sky, “an eloquent evocation ... a thoroughly charming memoir.” And People called The Coalwood Way, Hickam’s follow-up to October Sky, “a heartwarmer ... truly beautiful and haunting.”

Now Homer Hickam continues his extraordinary story with Sky of Stone, dazzling us with exquisite storytelling as he takes us back to that remarkable small town we first came to know and love in October Sky.

In the summer of ‘61, Homer “Sonny” Hickam, a year of college behind him, was dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny could reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother was spending the summer, a telephone call sends him back to the place he thought he had escaped, the gritty coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. There, Sonny’s father, the mine’s superintendent, has been accused of negligence in a man’s death—and the townspeople are in conflict over the future of the town.

Sonny’s mother, Elsie, has commanded her son to spend the summer in Coalwood to support his father. But within hours, Sonny realizes two things: His father, always cool and distant with his second son, doesn’t want him there ... and his parents’ marriage has begun to unravel. For Sonny, so begins a summer of discovery—of love, betrayal, and most of all, of a brooding mystery that threatens to destroy his father and his town.

Cut off from his college funds by his father, Sonny finds himself doing the unimaginable: taking a job as a “track-laying man,” the toughest in the mine. Moving out to live among the miners, Sonny is soon dazzled by a beautiful older woman who wants to be the mine’s first female engineer.

And as the days of summer grow shorter, Sonny finds himself changing in surprising ways, taking the first real steps toward adulthood. But it’s a journey he can make only by peering into the mysterious heart of Coalwood itself, and most of all, by unraveling the story of a man’s death and a father’s secret.

In Sky of Stone, Homer Hickam looks down the corridors of his past with love, humor, and forgiveness, brilliantly evoking a close-knit community where everyone knows everything about each other’s lives—except the things that matter most. Sky of Stone is a memoir that reads like a novel, mesmerizing us with rich language, narrative drive, and sheer storytelling genius.

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It's the summer of 1961. After his freshman year at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Homer wants to join his mother at her new house in Myrtle Beach, a coastal resort in South Carolina. But there's been a fatal accident back in the mine at Coalwood, and Homer's Dad, the mine superintendent, is under investigation by state and federal agencies. So, Mom tells Homer to go back home and keep his Dad company. And, as readers of the series know, Elsie Hickam is not one to trifle with.

SKY OF STONE is, I think, certainly superior to THE COALWOOD WAY, and perhaps even to ROCKET BOYS. It's in this third volume that Homer emerges from adolescence. He comes to grips with his parents' increasing estrangement from each other, his father's emotional distance, the loss of beloved pets, and the primacy of his older brother in his father's affections. Then there's Homer's first serious crush, the object being Rita, a junior mining engineer several years his senior. Finally, to pay off damage done to his father's Buick, Homer defies both parents, joins the United Mine Workers of America, moves out of the family home, and goes to work in the coal mine as a summer job. (SKY OF STONE refers to the ceiling of solid rock over the mine's tunnels.)

Homer's semi-dysfunctional family remains a source of reader sympathy. Over one weekend, young Hickam resides with the Likens family, the menfolk of which are going to improve their guest's softball skills. (Homer's been drafted by the union team that will play management on the Fourth of July.) At breakfast, Homer notices:

"(Mrs. Likens) smiled lovingly at her husband, and I thought again how much I envied her family. They all just seemed to like each other." The poignancy of this observation is heartbreaking.

Hickam self-deprecating humor makes him an eminently likable protagonist. He sets out to that July 4th showdown on the baseball diamond with the thought:

"... I had, in fact, only two hopes: one, that I wouldn't hit myself with the bat, and the other, that nobody would hit a ball in my direction." But, Homer rises to the occasion, much to the satisfaction of the reader.

Since, in the book's epilogue, Homer's narrative summarizes his life since that maturing summer of '61, I assume that SKY OF STONE is to be the last in the Coalwood series, which has been a genuine piece of true-life Americana. I shall miss it.

According to the author, Coalwood's mine has long since shut down, and the town itself barely exists as a place on the map anymore. However, there's a museum there dedicated to the town's mining heritage and the exploits of the Rocket Boys. Homer's books leave me wanting to travel across country to visit. Honor is due.

11 of 11 found the following review helpful:

Hickam's voice again resonates with quiet wisdom, dignityOct 25, 2001
By Bruce J. Wasser
During times of national crisis, it is all the more important for our nation to honor those heroes whose moral compass is true and whose voice reminds us of the unspoken, but genuine, values which symbolize greatness. Call it the Coalwood way, label it steadfastness of purpose, name it resolute adherence to hard work and internal discipline -- whatever words you wish to describe the genuine virtues of Homer Hickam, your commentary will not miss the mark. "Sky of Stone," the third installment of Hickam's memoirs, is a brilliant book; its vibrant pages remind us of the galvanizing power of individual excellence and of how common people, striving to live coherent and decent lives, serve as genuine role models for a national community that cherishes the notion of individual responsibility, hard work, and shared moral values.

"Sky of Stone" chronicles Homer Hickam's summer of 1961, one year after his graduation from high school and light years away from the gloriously innocent time of his adolesence, celebrated in "October Sky." This volume is a more somber, questioning memoir; it presents to us a terribly conflicted Homer, worried about his floundering studies at Virginia Tech, tormented about the apparent disintegration of his parents' marriage, and adrift in his own life, undertain as to how he will attain his goal of helping put humans on the moon. Hopes for spending the summer on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean flounder when his mother orders him to return to Coalwood to provide assistance to his father, who is embroiled in an investigation which could cost him his job.

Hickam despairs over his non-relationship with his father; the elder's brooding silence and unwillingness to present a self-defense as the coal company seeks a scapegoat for the death of a respected foreman compels the son to conduct his own search for the truth. This quest for truth reveals a different side of Coalwood, a community so aligned with its self-definition that it refuses to divulge secrets which could exculpate the very man on whose shoulders the future of the town rests. As the youthful Homer comes closer to an understanding of his father and the town, his father becomes even more remote, more removed.

It is this tone of emotional anguish that colors the entire memoir. As Homer becomes a man, he learns adult lessons: that truth often is as painful as it is liberating, that marriages have profound valleys, that honor and justice have enormous costs. He learns the significance of loyalty -- to one's job, to one's peers, to one's community, to one's word. Through backbreaking labor in the mine, Homer comes to grips with his father's devotion to coal and painfully accepts the consequences of this wisdom.

Yet, "Sky of Stone" is far from a melancholy work. The bittersweet pangs of love rival the glories of hard work and relationships nurtured by sweat, toil and common vision. Simple, unalloyed decency courses through the pages of "Sky of Stone;" the reader marvels at the simple honor the men and women of Coalwood exercise as they live their lives. Hickam's self-deprecatory sense of humor, so vivid in both "October Sky" and "The Coalwood Way," is, if you can believe it, even sharper in "Sky of Stone."

As this memoir reaches its conclusion, and as Homer evolves into manhood, the reader has grown as well. The pages of this lovingly-written book instruct, even as the narrative's consuming power absorbs our attention. Hickam's life and his careful, persuasive scrutiny of it gently teach us about those American virtues which, if properly duplicated, will insure our national greatness. This memoir is one to be cherished, and its author is truly a national treasure.

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:

Wish I could make it ten stars!!!!Nov 07, 2001

It's tempting to cast Homer Hickam as a rags-to-riches, self-made man. The son of a coal mine supervisor, he was raised in a rural West Virginia town with limited access to public education's most up-to-date resources. When, as a child, he experimented with designing and launching rockets (well before man had walked on the moon), he went up against the traditions of a community that had little use for original behavior. Inauspicious beginnings perhaps, but as an adult, Homer Hickam became an engineer for NASA and a best-selling writer.

So it would have been easy for him to paint himself as an undiscovered diamond in an unforgiving coal town. But that's not the tenor of Sky of Stone, in which Hickam re-creates the events of a long-ago summer spent in his hometown of Coalwood following his freshman year in college.

Sky of Stone is a follow-up to Hickam's two previous memoirs, Rocket Boys (which was made into the movie October Sky) and The Coalwood Way. In all three books, the author commemorates his hometown and its citizens with loving admiration. Homer's parents, though imperfect, are remembered for their humor, dedication and ingenuity. The author gives them full credit for insisting that he go to college and pursue his dreams.

More surprisingly, Hickam portrays Coalwood not as a soul- and lung-destroying wasteland, but as the embodiment of the American dream. Coalwood's fine schools, decent houses and well-nourished families are sustained by the production of coal. That's what the town's mining families believed, and Hickam honors their strong sense of self-determination.

The dark side to the coal industry -- black lung, union quarrels, unequal opportunity for women -- rears its head in Hickam's reminiscences, as they did in Coalwood in 1961. But they are not the subject of Sky of Stone. Hickam focuses on three young people -- Bobby Likens, Rita Walicki and himself -- for whom Coalwood's resistance to change acted as a bracing stimulant, calling forth all of the trio's shrewdness and creativity. They were made by Coalwood, not in spite of it.

The book's various plot strands -- the estrangement of Hickam's parents; the charges brought against his father involving the death of a mining foreman -- occasionally seem unconnected. But the author brings them all together in a final courtroom drama. Hickam's skill with plot, his wit and his capacity for summing up a character in a couple of good quotes all make Sky of Stone an admirable entry in the chronicles of his life.

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:

further poignant memories from Homer HickamNov 07, 2001
By Karen Sampson Hudson "Karen Sampson Hudson"
Like his previous books, "Rocket Books" and "The Coalwood Way," Homer Hickam's new memoir will touch your heart. The book is a kind of coming-of-age story when 18 year old Homer, now a college student at VPI (which has become Virginia Tech today), returns to a Coalwood summer spent working underground. The town has secrets which are harder to mine than the coal. "Coalwood business" remains outside the knowledge of Homer, in earlier years because of his age, now because of his outsider status, as a college student and one bound for a life away from the hills of West Virginia.

Slowly Homer chips away at the secrets, and at the truth of what happened one night when a fierce storm took out the electricity, stopped the ventilation in the mines, and caused a deadly buildup of methane gas.

Throughout the book, Hickam writes with a tender yet tough, clear-eyed clarity, of himself on the brink of manhood, and of many other residents of Coalwood, and most especially, of his parents. His father is dedicated to the mine and to the community, and his mother, despite her love for his father, yearns for a life far away from Coalwood. Homer, caught in the middle, is of an age to strike out for himself. But "Coalwood business" keeps his home for a summer of change and discovery. The old truths endure, and fidelity, compassion, friendship, honesty, and faith will prevail.

"Sky of Stone" is written with warmth and humor. The town of Coalwood as it was in l961 will come alive, and engage and entertain the reader. Highly recommended!

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:

CaptivatingOct 27, 2001
By Paul S. Lovett
Coalwood, WV, the scene of three Hickam books, appears as a prototypical small WV coal town - once bustling when coal was king and now surviving. Hickams' memoirs show Coalwood through the eyes of a 14 to 18 year old from 1957 through 1961. In doing so, Coalwood comes alive once again, with accomplishments that will take your breath away, love interests, humor, tragic mine accidents, deaths, and perhaps most of all the impact that parents have on their children. In Sky of Stone, the third of the Coalwood stories, Sonny Hickam has completed his first year at VTech and returns to his hometown with little to do but watch the summer pass and provide support to his mine superintendent Dad who neither wants it nor needs it. Sonny's Mom has left for Myrtle Beach for an undefined period of time. We are treated to the circumstances that enable Sonny to become a common miner/track layin man and an investigator trying to solve a mystery that pervades the town and the story. And we meet a jr enginette, Sonny's newest love interest. This is a hard book to put down. Hickam writes with humor, sensitivity and insight. His style is captivating. Like the other two books, death and the lifelong outcome of mining accidents weave through the story and are a part of the life of Coalwood. Hickam memoirs read like novels. However, Coalwood is a real town (look it up on your map) and many of the sites in the book are still there; Little's Church, the Clubhouse, Elementary School, Sonny's house. Stop in the Country Store on Rt 16 in Coalwood and get a map.

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