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Summary: Excellent Book! Homer does it again!
Review: "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.
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Summary: The very best book I've read in a long time
Review: And that's it, plain and true. Homer Hickam writes wonderfully rich books filled with prose worthy of Harper Lee or Mark Twain. He's the new Mark Twain in my opinion. They'll be studying him the college a hundred years from now. I'm just glad we have him with us in these days. Sky of Stone kept me awake until I finished it. I love his characters. I love especially his honorable and amazing father. You can tell Mr. Hickam still loves him so much. And Johnny Basso, Jake Mosby, Rita Walicki... these are characters that people will talk about for a very long time. Proud to know you, Homer, if only through your books.
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Summary: Lost in Time!!
Review: As a fellow West Virginian, I feel a closeness to all Homer Hickam's books. I have visited Coalwood many times. It is amazing that his boyhood home is still the same as the old pictures in his books. Life is slow, and peaceful and the people are very proud of their history.October Sky put Coalwood on the map, however, the people of Coalwood have raised their children for decades in this small
town. If you ever get a chance to visit do it. Homer Is not the
only one from Coalwood, this is a town of great people!!
Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: 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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Summary: Amazing Book
Review: Different than the first two memoirs but still Hickam draws you into Coalwood and shows takes you through an intimate journey back to Coalwood after his first year at college, where he is now in limbo from two aspects, he is no longer a Coalwood citizen but not an outsider either and he is also not a child anymore nor is he classed as an adult. The book is darker and a whole new level of awareness of the place that shaped his childhood is brought to light. Sonny finds new and deeper understandings of himself, family and life in general, as he is forced to look at it all from a rather different perspective than he has seen before. Sonny matures in this book greatly during his first summer after his freshman year in college. This one of the three memoirs is my personal favorite, for me it was the one that grabbed me, took me inside its soul and would not let go.
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Summary: Hickam's voice again resonates with quiet wisdom, dignity
Review: 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.
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Summary: Simply put, a great read
Review: Have you ever read a book that you just couldn't put down? There are so few of them but Sky of Stone is definitely in that category. I loved this book. I haven't read any other of Hickam's books but I'm going back now and read all of them. I love Coalwood and the people in it. To read through Sonny's mind is fun. I laughed out loud a lot while I read. My husband thought I'd lost my mind. Now he's reading it and I hear him laughing, too. We've discovered our new favorite writer.
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Summary: Wonderful, open and heartfelt.....
Review: Homer Hickam's memoir of his life is an open look at his life in the summer after his freshman year in college. After a not too brilliant start at college he ends up going home for the summer to Coalwood, West Virginia a small coal mining town. The way of life in a "company" town is difficult to properly present, yet Homer Hickam does it with ease. The lessons he learns about his father, his mother,and life itself are so openly expressed and wonderfully written, that sometimes it is hard to remember that this is not a fiction novel. The author learns a great many important "life lessons", usually not the easy way. The hard work in the coal mines is vividly detailed, you can feel the aching muscles and exhaustion. His love of an "older" woman is a heartfelt part of this book. It is like a good friend sitting down and remembering a summer, honest, open and introspective, thankful that in the end some tough lessons were learned. There is never a moment of arrogance about what he has achieved in his life,despite the odds. You don't have to read OCTOBER SKY or THE COALWOOD WAY in order to understand and enjoy this book, but why you wouldn't want to read them anyway would be hard to understand. SKY OF STONE is a wonderful memoir, and a heartfelt tribute to his family, to life in a hardworking small town and the people that help him weave the strong fabric of his life.
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Summary: Homer is still Kickin'!
Review: Honestly, after reading Rocket Boys, I didn't think anything could compare to it and was afraid to read The Coalwood Way. I read it, and it was just as touching and inspirational. Then, with Sky of Stone, I knew it could NEVER live up to the other two. Wrong, again, was I. For those of you who have read one of Mr. Hickam's other Memoirs, STOP READING THIS REVIEW, you know how great Homer's books are, just order it, and read it. Sky of Stone does NOT fall short of the expectations readers have from Homer, it is just as much a page-turner as RBoys and The Coalwood Way. If you haven't read any of the others, I strongly recommend Sky of Stone to you (and get the others, too. I promise you'll want all three after you read one). Sky of Stone is a book that can lift you from within the trying times that we are living through right now in our world and take you to a simpler time, in a simpler place, with simpler people. Although these people are simple, that doesn't mean at all that there is no plot. I can't imagine anyone closing the back cover of one of Hickam's books without having a sense of "Wow, it can't be over, please let there be more pages." In the past I could always look forward to the next book in the series, but Homer has said this is the last in the Coalwood series. I've read RBoys twice and The Coalwood Way and Sky of Stone once each. I may have never been to Coalwood, West Virgina, but I feel like I've lived there all my life. Fortunately, God put someone with such a talent for writing to live in this time and place who could later write about it and give us all a chance to see what life was once like. Thanks, Homer!! And even though you said this would be the last one, we won't complain if you change your mind and write me. I encourge anyone CONSIDERING this book to stop considering here. Buy it, read it, and you WILL enjoy it. I don't write book reviews often, and when I do, it says something about how much I've enjoyed the book. Homer's books have helped me through some hard times. This story is POWERFUL!
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Summary: This third Coalwood book is even better than "Rocket Boys"
Review: 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.
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