This was a joy to read! It's a memoir of the author growing up in a coal town in West Virginia in the late 50's, shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik. He and his friends are inspired to build rockets and with the help of their teacher and school, acquire the knowledge to do so. They experiment with launching their rockets to hone their skills, while their coal town home is moving toward oblivion.
I loved learning some rocketry and finally can name a use for trigonometry and calculus, not that I ever took those classes! The relationship of the boys to each other and of Homer to his parents is genuine and moving. I learned too of the hard lives of coal miners, giving me a new appreciation for my relatives who worked in the mines in Pennsylvania in the late 1800s.
Some lucky person will pick this up in the next campground we visit!
Published: 1998 Read: May 2018 Genre: Memoir
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