The Keeper's Son by Homer Hickman

   I have read other novels by Homer Hickman about the coalminers and rocket boys but for some reason had set this one aside on my shelf until  now.  Published un 2003, 420 pages, paperback.  It is fiction but just maybe of some historical  truth too.  I was fascinated by the subject involving the people of the Killakeet Island in the Outer  Banks and the German U boats that  were along that coast.  Maybe because of my father's flight disappearance into that deep Atlantic with his entire flight crew and plane, WWII.   This is a well told tale with great characters.  

Jack Thurlow returns in the Coast Guard to his  home roots on Killakeet Island where his father  Jack is the last in a line of lighthouse keepers.  Joh has not interest in continuing that line.  When he is a young boy he is out  in a boat with his toddler brother Jacob who is swept away and never found, not a trace.  This will haunt Josh and his father through life.  

Dosie Crossan has returned to the Killakeet home  of her family seeking to restore something of peace and determine her future.  Otto Krebs is a famous German submarine U-boat captain with another back story of heartbreak.  .  

Back Cover

This review is from Amazon.com and succinctly covers this good tale:.... " In 1941, Killakeet Island of the wind-swept Outer Banks of North Carolina is home to a tiny, peaceful population of fishermen, clam stompers, oyster rakers, and a few lonely sailors of the Coast Guard. Dominating the glorious, raw beauty of the little island is the majestic Killakeet Lighthouse, which for generations has been the responsibility of one family, the Thurlows.

However, Josh Thurlow, the Keeper's son, has forsworn his heritage to become the commander of the Maudie Jane, a small Coast Guard patrol boat operating off Killakeet. Josh is still tortured by guilt, seventeen years after losing his baby brother at sea. Then his life is complicated by the arrival of the beautiful Dosie Crossan, who has journeyed to lonely Killakeet to escape the outside world and perhaps find a purpose in life. While Josh's heart is stirred by the often-vexing Dosie, he continues his search for his brother, even after a wolfpack of German U-boats arrives to soak the island's beaches with blood and oil.

One of the U-boats is captained by Otto Krebs, a famed and ruthless undersea warrior. Krebs, a man also scarred by lost love, comes to Killakeet, however, with more than torpedoes and plans for war: He may also have the answer to the mystery that haunts Josh Thurlow.  The Keeper's Son is a rousing, romantic tale of the power of the human heart forever searching for redemption.  "

First page prologue

   There is a historical interweave about Ben Franklin, and  penance and the Founding Fathers on pages 146--155.

Page 68Josh thinks about the snapping turtles he caught from the creek as a young boy,  " they were always so angry. ..he couldn't imagine going through life always mad at everything.  Keeper Jack had explained it to him.  Anger is sometimes just another way of being afraid..."

The townspeople, the sailors whom Josh is training for war despite their and their mothers' protests, the UBoat  Captain who begins to doubt himself, the  island Preacher,  and there are so many more characters.  

This was a very good read, 5 *****.  Although it was not a fast read for me, it took concentration and was not something that I could  whiz through.  Well worth the time.  

Sky of Stone by Homer Hickam

 

Read this in January, the second of his memoirs about life in Coalwood, a West Virginia coal mining town.  This time the Rocket Boy, Sonny is home from college, VPI, on summer break, reluctantly.  Back in Coalwood with his father, Homer, and he is not happy.  Sonny wanted to go to Myrtle Beach, NC to be with his Mom, Elsie,  but she insisted he go home to spend the summer with his dad because someone needed to be there.  There was an accident at the mine where Homer is superintendent and there is an investigation and not looking good for Homer.  Sonny ends up going to work in the mine and joining the union, which is at odds with Homer and management.  Management looks for a scape goat, and  it appears Homer may take the fall. Sonny asserts his independence and becomes a summer working miner under the supervision of Johnny and working alongside Bobby another college boy home for the summer. Pg 133, "I quickly discovered that what Johnny considered work was going as hard and fast as possible and then a little harder and faster on top of that."  Sonny moves into Floretta's boarding house in town and there meets and develops a crush on Rita, a junior engineer,  the "older" woman assigned to the mining company but who being a woman is not to be allowed inside the mine. 

The book, takes place over the summer of 1961 and is suspenseful as Sonny resolves many issues about and between he and his father and learns more about the secrets of the town.  Including the Epilogue there are 409 pages in this paperback, published in 2001 it had been on my shelf for awhile.  I'd  previously read the first book, "October Sky"  about the Rocket Boys of Coalwood. It would not be necessary to read these books in sequence, but since I had I felt it gave me good background. 

Pages  2-3 with the paragraph hilited.  By the Epilogue Sonny has grown  significantly in both physical and mental awareness, changed in body and mind and learned a lot over this summer.   C

Page 398, "Every summer for the remainder of my college career, I returned to Coalwood to work in the mine.  I became sort of an honorary junior engineer.  My father put me through his boot camp and Jake Mosley taught me much about mining.  A young engineer by the name of Tom Musick especially took me under his wing.  I learned more practical engineering under their tutelage than a thousand  classrooms could ever hope to provide.  I graduated from  VPI now known as Virginia Tech with a degree in industrial engineering."
  .    With the war in Vietnam, he joined the USArmy and  following Combat Engineering Officer Candidate School joined the 4th Infantry Division in the Vietnamese Highlands.  He was at the battle of Dak To,  where the Army infantrymen scaled the mountain against the North Vietnamese.  He later went to near the Cambodian border and fought in battle with his boots on the wrong feet and was rescued by an F-100 Super Sabre jet.  It  had flown into Thailand from Myrtle Beach AFB and he felt his Mom had sent it.  He returned home to the US and  learned not to wear his Army uniform in public, being spat on.  He writes he forgave thoem but it was not easy..  I enjoyed this book and rate it 4 ****