The third installment of Homer Hickman’s memoir entitles Sky of Stone, dictates the struggles of a small town boy returning home after experiencing the vastly different environment of higher education. Sonny’s summer of 1961 has a vastly different plan than the one he had imaged, lazing around the hot North Carolina beaches, strolling for girls and having the summer of his life. Instead he finds himself back in Coalwood, West Virginia, doing what he vowed he would never do. As mining coal proves to be more than he bargained for, with long and tolling days, he finds himself changing physically and mentally, caring more and more about the people around him and his hometown. Sonny is dedicated to earning his way, making it back to college in the fall, …show more content…
Throughout the novel sonny learns the importance of finding and taking the moral high ground in any situation, as well as the importance of honesty, even in the most insignificant situations. For example, when Sonny works in the mines with Big Jim he learns the value and lessons that can be taught from manual labor, as well as the importance of honesty, as Big Jim worked to ensure neither participants cheated when racing to lay track. The more significant battles that Sonny faces throughout the novel include the rocky state of his family and home, his infatuation with a young woman by the name of Rita, his feeling burdened and weighted by his family as well as the suffocating atmosphere of his hometown, and his need to find friends who share his feelings and ideas. Hickman’s novel spectacularly captures the atmosphere of small town life in West Virginia, particularly a small coal town in West Virginia. He also perfectly dictates the struggles the millennial generation faces when coming from a small town, and the feelings of suffocation, stifled dreams, and fear associated with the thought of