"In the summer of '61, Homer "Sonny" Hickam, a year of college behind him, was dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny could reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother was spending the summer, a telephone call sends him back to the place he thought he had escaped, the gritty coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. There, Sonny's father, the mine's superintendent, has been accused of negligence in a man's death - and the townspeople are in conflict over the future of the town.

Sonny's mother, Elsie, has commanded her son to spend the summer in Coalwood to support his father. But within hours, Sonny realizes two things: His father, always cool and distant with his second son doesn't want him there...and his parents' marriage has begun to unravel. For Sonny, so begins a summer of discovery - of love, betrayal, and most of all, of a brooding mystery that threatens to destroy his father and his town.".

"Cut off from his college funds by his father, Sonny finds himself doing the unimaginable: taking a job as a "track-laying man," the toughest in the mine. Moving out to live among the miners, Sonny is soon dazzled by an older woman who wants to be the mine's first female engineer. And as the days of summer grow shorter, Sonny finds himself changing in surprising ways, taking the first real steps toward adulthood.

But it's a journey he can make only by peering into the mysterious heart of Coalwood itself, and most of all, by unraveling the story of a man's death and a father's secret."--BOOK JACKET.