October Sky (The Coalwood Series #1)

It was 1957, the year Sputnik raced across the Appalachian sky, and the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia, was slowly dying. Faced with an uncertain future, Sonny Hickam (aka Homer Hickam, Jr.) nurtured a dream: to learn how to build a rocket so he could work in the space business. The introspective son of Homer Hickam, the mine superintendent, and Elsie Lavender Hickam, a woman determined to get her sons out of Coalwood forever, Sonny gathered in five other boys and convinced them to help him. Along the way, the boys learn not only how to turn scraps of metal into sophisticated rockets but manage to give the people of Coalwood hope that the future will be brighter, at least for their children. As Sonny's parents fight in different ways to save their sons, and the people of Coalwood come together to help their Rocket Boys, Sonny and the Big Creek Missile Agency light up the sky with their flaming projectiles and dreams of glory.