West Virginia

Bonnie said, "Rocket Boys, a memoir by NASA engineer Homer Hickam, is a good one for West Virginia. He paints a vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia mining town of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, when anything was possible, even in a company town that swallowed its men alive."

From the publisher: "The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir that inspired the film October Sky, Rocket Boys is a uniquely American memoir, a powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the dawn of the 1960s, of a mother's love and a father's fears, of a group of young men who dreamed of launching rockets into outer space."

Homer Hickam looks back after a distinguished NASA career to tell his own true story of growing up in a dying coal town and of how, against the odds, he made his dreams of launching rockets into outer space come true.