Sky of Stone: A Memoir

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Rocket Boys and The Coalwood Way transports us back to his West Virginia hometown and the summer that nearly destroyed the close-knit community in this “beautifully executed” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) memoir.

“Vivid and alive . . . Hickam has made [Coalwood] live again in his writing.”—The New York Times Book Review

In the summer of ’61, Homer “Sonny” Hickam, a year of college behind him, is dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny can reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother is spending the summer, a telephone call sends him back to the place he thought he had escaped: the gritty coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. There, Sonny’s father, the mine’s superintendent, has been accused of negligence in a man’s death. Sonny’s mother, Elsie, has ordered her son to spend the summer in Coalwood to support his father. For Sonny, so begins a season of discovery—a time when he will learn about love, loss, and a closely guarded secret that threatens to destroy his father and his town.

As the days of summer grow shorter, Sonny finds himself taking the first real steps toward manhood. But it’s a journey he can make only by unraveling the story of a man’s death and a father’s secret—the mysteries that lie at the very heart of Coalwood.