The Coalwood Way

By: Homer Hickam

Narrated by: Frank Muller

Homer Hickam is the #1 New York Times best-selling author whose life inspired the critically acclaimed film October Sky. In The Coalwood Way he returns to his childhood home of Coalwood, West Virginia for an inspiring memoir about growing up in a town that’s slowly fading away.

Homer and his close buddies, who call themselves the Rocket Boys, are high school seniors in 1959. Their rocket building experiments amaze the locals, thanks to top-quality moonshine for fuel, “liberated” materials, and Homer’s self-taught understanding of higher math. But no matter how brilliant their experiments are, they can do little to help preserve Coalwood’s way of life. With the coal mine on its last legs, prospects for the town are unpredictable at best. For anyone who’s ever dreamed of greatness or wondered what an uncertain future might bring, this book will seem warmly familiar. Frank Muller’s affectionate narration captures both the spirit of ambition and the spectre of gloomy prospects.

©2000 Homer H. Hickam, Jr. (P)2001 Recorded Books, LLC

Great work from Home Hickam and Frank Muller

Aside from being a great book, it is one of my favorite Frank Muller narrations. Highly recommended

Another great HH book. Narrator, not so much.

The story is great. Really interesting and well written. The narrator is very distracting with his odd cadence and mispronounced names. Would have been better with the narrator of Don’t Blow Yourself Up.

great but narrator a bit weak

narrator was not as good as sky of stone. but a great book. love Homer Hickam stories have em all and watch the movie many times

Narration can make or break a story

Narrator is terrible. Almost as if he is trying too hard to create characters that are completely different than those in Rocket Boys. Also, the story isn’t congruent with the happenings in Rocket Boys. Dislike and deleted.

Great story but the narrator is a bit annoying on how he reads

The story is great you immediately dive in to the story. However the person reading it seems to either not care about the story or they have better things to do. Whoever read Rocket boys really took it to the next level but this guy I would say doesn’t do much. The narrator transforms you into that world of the book. This narrator makes me want to stop reading this book or listening to this book. He is truly terrible at reading a book like this.