When Homer Hickam (the father of the author) asked for Elsie Lavender’s hand, Elsie instead chose a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen. But ultimately her dreams of a life with him were crushed, and she married Homer. She was reminded of her carefree days with Buddy every day because of his unusual wedding gift: an alligator named Albert she raised in the bathroom. When Albert scared Homer by grabbing his pants, he gave Elsie an ultimatum: “Me or that alligator!” After giving it some thought, Elsie concluded there was only one thing to do: Carry Albert home.

Cowboy and former homicide detective Mike Wire retreats to Montana after a stressful career in Hollywood. When a paleontologist and his assistants arrive hoping to dig, Mike knows that once discovered, those bones won’t stay buried, and not everyone hunting for them is doing it in the interest of science.

This is the true story that inspired the feature film October Sky. It was 1957, and the small mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia, was slowly dying. Faced with an uncertain future, Homer Hickam nurtured a dream: to send rockets into outer space. He fell in with a group of misfits who learned not only how to turn scraps of metal into sophisticated rockets but how to sustain their hope in a town that swallowed its men alive.