Throughout
Rocket Boys, Homer has struggled with conflicted feelings for Coalwood. At times he’s despised it, considering it a hostile, hopeless place where no sane person would choose to live—but at other times, Homer has seen Coalwood as a friendly place, full of concerned townspeople who want to help others. In the end, Homer comes to something of a compromise: he recognizes that Coalwood is full of good people who have helped him along the way to NASA, but he also concedes that for a scientist like himself, Coalwood could never be a lasting home. For most of the memoir, Homer has wanted to escape Coalwood, but now that he’s long gone, Hickam looks back on his hometown with a sweet, melancholy nostalgia.