Looking back after a distinguished NASA career that fulfilled his boyhood ambition, Hickam shares the story of his youth, taking readers into the life of the little mining town and the boys who came to embody both its tensions and its dreams. With the help -- and sometimes hindrance -- of the people of Coalwood, the Rocket Boys learn not only how to turn mine scraps into rockets that soar miles into the heavens, but how to find hope in a town that progress is passing by. A uniquely American memoir, "Rocket Boys" is at once an inspiring chronicle of triumph and a luminous story of a mother's love, a father's fears, and a young man's coming of age. With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Homer Hickam beautifully captures a moment when a dying town, a divided family, and a band of teenage dreamers dared to look beyond their differences and set their sights on the stars -- and saw a future that the nation was just beginning to imagine.