Search results for ""author homer hickam""

‘Must-read… A funny yet tragic tale of a husband and wife’s car journey across the US with Albert the alligator in tow. Yes, really.’ Marie Claire A journey of a thousand miles. With an alligator on the back seat. And John Steinbeck as a passenger. This is a tale where everything is true,except the bits that are made up. In 1930s America, the Great Depression made everyone’s horizons smaller, and Elsie Lavender found herself back where she began, in the coalfields of West Virginia.She had just one memento of her halcyon days – a baby alligator named Albert. Then one day, her husband’s stoical patience snapped and Elsie had to choose between Homer and Albert.She decided that there was only one thing to do: they would carry Albert home to Florida. And so began their odyssey – a journey like no other, where Elsie, Homer and Albert encountered everything from movie stars and revolutionaries to Ernest Hemingway and hurricanes in their struggle to find love, redemption,and a place to call home. From the bestselling author of Rocket Boys–the basis of the movie October Sky–comes a long-awaited prequel. Big Fish meets The Notebook in this novel about a man, a woman, and their alligator.

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From Homer Hickam, the author of the #1 bestselling Rocket Boys adapted into the beloved film October Sky, comes this astonishing memoir of high adventure, war, love, NASA, and his struggle for literary success.Homer Hickam’s memoir Rocket Boys and the movie adaptation October Sky have become one of the most popular stories in the world, inspiring millions to pursue a better life. But what happened to Homer after he was a West Virginia rocket boy? In his latest memoir, Homer recounts his life in college where he built the world's biggest, baddest game cannon, fought through some of the worst battles in Vietnam, became a scuba instructor, discovered sunken U-boats, wrote the definitive account of a World War II naval battle, befriended Tom Clancy, made a desperate attempt to save the passengers of a sunken river boat, trained the first Japanese astronauts, taught David Letterman to scuba dive, helped to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, wrote his number one bestselling Rocket Boys, and was on set during the making of October Sky. Although told with humor and wit, Hickam does not shy away from the pain and hardship endured and the mistakes he made during the tumultuous decades since his life in the town he made famous—Coalwood, West Virginia.

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