Homer Hickam Books in Order
Explore Homer Hickam books in order, with quick summaries, series guides, and where-to-start tips for his memoirs, war novels, and moon adventures.
Last updated: July 1, 2026
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Publication Order
20 books
Torpedo Junction
by Homer Hickam
1989
Hickam's first book is a deeply researched history of the U-boat war off America's East Coast in 1942. It brings the Atlantic campaign close to shore, showing how suddenly the war reached ordinary ships, sailors, and beach towns.
Rocket Boys
by Homer Hickam
1998
After Sputnik streaks over Coalwood, West Virginia, Sonny Hickam and his friends start building rockets as a way toward a bigger future. The memoir mixes teenage trial and error with family tension, ambition, and a whole town watching.
Back to the Moon
by Homer Hickam
1999
A renegade scientist hijacks a space shuttle to reach the moon, convinced a secret there could change Earth's energy future. Trapped with him, one reluctant crewmate must decide whether to stop the mission or help it survive.
The Coalwood Way
by Homer Hickam
2000
Set during Sonny Hickam's senior year, this return to Coalwood follows the Rocket Boys through Christmas, family strain, and the next round of launches. It is warmer and more intimate than Rocket Boys, but the stakes at home are just as real.
Sky of Stone
by Homer Hickam
2001
Home from his first year of college, Sonny Hickam is forced back to Coalwood when his father is blamed for a foreman's death. Working in the mine and chasing the truth, he begins to see his town, and himself, differently.
We Are Not Afraid
by Homer Hickam
2002
Drawing on stories from Coalwood, Hickam reflects on how people live bravely in dangerous times. Part memoir and part guide, the book turns family, work, faith, and community into a practical argument against fear.
The Keeper's Son
by Homer Hickam
2003
Josh Thurlow returns to Killakeet Island to command a Coast Guard patrol boat and keep searching for the brother lost at sea years earlier. As German attacks close in on the Outer Banks, private grief and wartime danger collide.
The Ambassador's Son
by Homer Hickam
2005
In the Solomon Islands in 1943, Josh Thurlow is ordered to hunt down a missing Marine officer whose disappearance could become a scandal. The search turns into a dangerous mix of jungle fighting, divided loyalties, and uneasy alliances.
The Far Reaches
by Homer Hickam
2007
After the slaughter at Tarawa, Josh Thurlow is pulled into a strange mission with a young nun and a handful of fighters on islands under Japanese control. It becomes a brutal test of loyalty, faith, and survival far from the regular war.
Red Helmet
by Homer Hickam
2008
Song Hawkins thinks she has found love with coal mine manager Cable Jordan, but marriage drops her into a West Virginia town she does not understand. When crisis sends her underground as a trainee miner, survival and trust become painfully real.
My Dream of Stars
by Homer Hickam
2010
In this collaborative memoir, Anousheh Ansari traces her path from revolutionary Iran to life in America and, eventually, to the International Space Station. It is a determined, hopeful story about science, entrepreneurship, and becoming the first female commercial spaceflight participant.
The Dinosaur Hunter
by Homer Hickam
2010
Mike Wire, a former homicide detective turned Montana cowboy, is drawn into murder and fossil theft on ranchland rich with dinosaur bones. The deeper he digs, the more dangerous the fight becomes for the people and place he loves.
Crater
by Homer Hickam
2012
In the 22nd century, teenage miner Crater Trueblood is sent on a dangerous mission across the moon after an act of bravery changes his life. With Maria and a strange, loyal gillie beside him, he must cross deadly terrain to save his people.
Paco
by Homer Hickam
2012
This short memoir blends Hickam's early NASA years with the story of Paco, his beloved black-and-white cat. When a mission is in trouble and Paco falls ill, one small meow carries surprising weight.
Crescent
by Homer Hickam
2013
Crescent is a genetically engineered fighter taught to kill, until Crater Trueblood captures her and shows her another life. When she is accused of murder, Crater and Maria flee across the moon with her, chased by enemies on every side.
From Rocket Boys to October Sky
by Homer Hickam
2013
Hickam looks back at writing Rocket Boys and watching it become October Sky. It is a candid, behind-the-scenes memoir about page-to-screen changes, Hollywood friction, and the odd experience of seeing your own life turned into a movie.
Crater Trueblood and the Lunar Rescue Company
by Homer Hickam
2014
When Maria Medaris is kidnapped on the moon, Crater Trueblood and his rescue crew race after her. The mission soon widens into a fight against engineered hybrids and an asteroid threat that could destroy both the moon and Earth.
Carrying Albert Home
by Homer Hickam
2015
Newly married Homer and Elsie Hickam head from West Virginia toward Florida with an alligator named Albert in the car. Their long, chaotic road trip becomes a funny, tender story about love, missed chances, and the strange baggage families carry.
A Most Unwelcome Adventure
by Homer Hickam
2016
This short return to Coalwood brings Sonny Hickam and the Rocket Boys back for one more unpublished adventure. It carries the same mix of small-town trouble, humor, and restless energy that runs through the Coalwood books.
Don't Blow Yourself Up
by Homer Hickam
2021
In this memoir of the years after Coalwood, Hickam moves from Virginia Tech to Vietnam, scuba diving, NASA, and finally authorship. It is an adventurous, often funny account of hard lessons, close calls, and a life that kept getting bigger.
Where should I start?
If you want his best-known true story: Rocket Boys → The Coalwood Way → Sky of Stone
If you want World War II adventure: The Keeper's Son → The Ambassador's Son → The Far Reaches
If you want moon-set science fiction: Crater → Crescent → Crater Trueblood and the Lunar Rescue Company
If you want a warm, funny standalone: Carrying Albert Home
If you want the memoir after Coalwood: Don't Blow Yourself Up
Author bio
Homer Hickam was born on February 19, 1943, and grew up in Coalwood, West Virginia, a company coal town that later became the emotional center of much of his writing. He was the second son of Homer and Elsie Hickam, and the push and pull between that tight little town and the wider world gave him material for decades.
Coalwood never really left him.
As a teenager, Hickam was one of the boys who started building rockets after Sputnik crossed the sky in 1957. He graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960, then went on to Virginia Tech, where he earned a degree in industrial engineering in 1964. While he was there, he also helped create the school cannon known as Skipper, which tells you something useful about him right away: even in college, he liked big ideas that made noise.
After graduation, he served in the U.S. Army and was in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, earning the Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medal. He later worked as an engineer for the Army Missile Command and, in 1981, joined NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center. At NASA he worked in spacecraft design and crew training, helped train shuttle and Spacelab crews, worked on Hubble missions, and helped train the first Japanese astronauts. Before retiring in 1998, he was the payload training manager for the International Space Station program.
He did not begin as a book author.
Hickam started writing in 1969 after coming home from Vietnam. His first pieces were magazine articles about scuba diving, a subject he knew well as a diver and instructor. That work led him toward history, especially the wrecks and stories of the U-boat war off the American coast, and eventually to Torpedo Junction, his first book. It was a military history book, not a memoir, and it showed early on that he liked action, research, and people doing difficult work under pressure.
Then came Rocket Boys, the book that brought him to a huge audience and later fed into the film October Sky. Readers still come to it for the plainspoken mix of family strain, teenage trial and error, and the pleasure of watching stubborn kids teach themselves how to do something hard. He returned to that same world in The Coalwood Way and Sky of Stone, books that deepen the story of Sonny Hickam, his parents, and the town that both held him close and pushed him to dream bigger.
His range is wider than many people expect. Some readers know him best for the wartime adventure of The Keeper's Son and the Josh Thurlow novels, which mix Coast Guard action, romance, and World War II history. Others like the lunar frontier feel of Crater and the rest of the Helium-3 books, where mining, engineering, and survival matter as much as heroics. And Carrying Albert Home turns a family legend into something funny, odd, and unexpectedly tender.
Across all of it, Hickam keeps returning to certain kinds of people: miners, soldiers, engineers, divers, small-town families, and dreamers who are a little too stubborn to quit. He also likes settings that make people work for every inch, Coalwood, the Outer Banks, the South Pacific, Montana, and the moon. Even when the backdrop changes, his books usually care about the same things, duty, family, nerve, and the hope that a person can build a life larger than the one first handed to him.
These days he is still closely tied to the world that made him well known. He has written later memoirs such as Don't Blow Yourself Up, is married to Linda Terry Hickam, an artist who has also been his first editor and assistant, and still seems drawn to space, the sea, and even dinosaur bones. That restless curiosity is a big part of what makes his work feel so alive.
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