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Sky of Stone: A Memoir

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Through Homer Hickam's marvelous memoirs, readers have been transported to Coalwood, West Virginia, of the late 1950s - first in ROCKET BOYS (made into the film OCTOBER SKY), then THE COALWOOD WAY, and now SKY OF STONE.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Magnificent. I can't say more. I'm astonished at how good this story is. Homer Hickam doesn't write memoirs. He writes life. The book stands alone. You don't have to read the two memoirs that came before it. Sky of Stone is many things - humorous, tragic, mysterious. This is really, in many ways, a book that would fit very well as a mystery novel. I wanted so much to turn ahead to find out why Homer, Senior was willing to throw away his whole life and accept the blame for the tragic accident that killed his top foreman. And Homer's courtroom scenes are topnotch, absolutely riveting. I loved Rita,too, Coalwood's first woman engineer. I woke up the dogs laughing when she tricks Sonny (as Homer, the author was known then) to take her in the mine. This books deserves to be the top book of the fall season.

There are authors who make you say to yourself "this person writes wonderfully, but I could never write like this...." Then there are authors that make you think exactly the opposite. "Wow, I can be a writer - it would be a snap to write like this."

Homer Hickam is one of those latter authors. You read his stuff and you say "hey, I could do this...." Of course, 10 minutes after trying to imitate his writing style you would realize your folly. Being a pure, simple, emotional, relevant, romantic, respectful storyteller is, alas, not as easy as Hickam makes it seem.

But who cares. The joy in Hickam's stories is their simplicity, their commonality, and their truthful resonance with us all.

Frankly, I thought nothing could top Rocket Boys and the first-time wonder of discovering Hickam. And since Sky of Stone re-visits the Coalwood scene I figured it to be a Rocket Boys rehash. Not so. Not at all. In fact if this had been Hickam's first book it would have been a winner just like Rocket Boys.

So if you're a Hickam fan, dig in, you're going to love this book on the drama of Sonny's life in the summer after his freshman year in college. And if you're new to Hickam, plunge ahead and join the club.

If Norman Rockwell paintings were books, they would have been written by Homer Hickam.

I cannot help but get the impression that many readers (and perhaps booksellers) regard Homer Hickam's three Coalwood memoirs as techno-rocket volumes suitable only for space-obsessed men and boys. This is simply not the case. Hickam is a storyteller above all else, and with his multiple subplots, intricate story lines, subtle nuances, smooth transitions, and family conflicts that crescendo to emotional realizations and understandings on the part of an intriguing cast of characters, he shows his marvelous expertise as a stylist. The rocket building in "Rocket Boys" (also published as "October Sky," the title of the movie based on the book) was simply the "hook" that he used to capture readers' attention. The real story of not only this memoir but also "The Coalwood Way" and his final volume in the Coalwood trilogy, "Sky of Stone," revolves around the people of his small hometown and how they never failed to come together to help one another and triumph over ever-present hardships. His books are a testimony to the human spirit, proving--as William Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech--that men and women "will not merely endure; [they] will prevail." And Hickam himself is prevailing too, producing in "Sky of Stone" his best Coalwood work yet. I think it is unfortunate his books are either placed in the American history section of bookstores (a subject that many people--remembering the textbooks of their youth-- believe to be dry-as-dust and slow moving) or with autobiography/memoirs (volumes that too often are regarded as egotistical paeans to one's accomplishments). Homer Hickam's Coalwood books should almost be shelved with novels, if only so that browsing readers will find these candid and introspective stories that are written by an author who knows how to transform personal truths into universal themes.

My boy friend said I'd enjoy Homer's works so I started with The Coalwood Way, then backtracked to Rocket Boys (so much different and better than the still-wonderful movie October Sky) and now Sky of Stone. I am stressed to hear that Sky of Stone is the last in the trilogy. Please, Homer, say it isn't so. For the last few weeks, I have been curled up at night reading these books and it's like I've become a part of Coalwood. There is so much wisdom in them, so much joy, and I laughed out loud so often at the things that would happen to Sonny and the other Coalwoodians. I dearly loved reading about Rita in this book. What a heroine she was! This was a kind of mystery story, too, better than anything John Grisham ever wrote. I am a dedicated fan but I want more Coalwood, please.

"Sky of Stone" has all of the right elements; humor, drama, action, adventure, mystery, and much more! When reading this book, as well as "Rocket Boys" and "The Coalwood Way", you feel like you are really living what Homer experienced. Homer Hickam does an excellent job of drawing you into his story. To date I would have to say, without a doubt, this book is the best I have ever read.