Review: Recommended!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 16, 2014
I really enjoyed this story about Jessie, a lad who is determined to become an astronaut after growing up seeing the rockets go off into space close to his home. He is determined to improve his academic skills so that he could get a scholarship and get on the programme at NASA.It is also a story of a difficult home life and a father who drinks. Jessie and his brothers get through this by supporting each other and their mother until their father sees the error of his ways.  This story is full of historical facts about the space program and the Vietnam war and what both of those things meant to the people who lived through them. The space race with Russia, the national pride and what it meant to mankind in general are all seen through the eyes of Jessie.Being from the UK, I found it all a fascinating read to hear about what it would have been like for those people who were there at the time. Jessie and his family were forcibly relocated from the home they had always known to make room for the expansion of the NASA site and to protect the public from flying debris after a series of accidents result in pieces of rocket landing within a few feet of where they lived.The story is really well told and the pages just flowed for me on this one.