Homer H. Hickam

Elsie Lavender and Homer Hickam (the father of the author) were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie's dreams of a life with him were crushed and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields,...

The cowboys who work on the ranchlands of Montana expect more than their fair share of trouble. One of them is Mike Wire, a former homicide detective. Mike is about to learn murder and mayhem can happen under Montana's big skies, too. Beneath the earth lie enough dinosaur fossils to fill several museum collections -- and make a fortune for whoever claims them first. Soon he will have to combine everything he learned as a cop with everything he knows...

Homer Hickam, the introspective son of a mine superintendent and a mother determined to get him out of Coalwood, West Virginia forever, nurtures a dream to send rockets into outer space--an ambition that changes his life and the lives of everyone living in Coalwood in 1957.

In the twenty-second century, sixteen-year-old Crater Trueblood, who mines the moon for Helium-3 to produce energy for a desperate, war-torn Earth, undertakes a deadly mission that could mean the difference between life and death for every inhabitant of the moon.

In 1943, Coast Guard captain Josh Thurlow leads a desperate venture to Japanese-held islands of the South Pacific to track down a Medal of Honor hero and an ambassador's missing son.

In the 1950s, a West Virginia teen turns his gaze from a black future in the coal mines below to the black vault above as news of the Sputnik launch ignites a life-changing interest in rocket science.