Well folks, I just finished my favorite literary adventure of 2015 with Homer Hickam, Jr.’s new novel, Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, His Wife, and Her Alligator. Hickam is the New York Times bestselling author of Rocket Boys which was made into the film “October Sky”. I read Rocket Boys when I was attending community college in Western Kentucky and thoroughly enjoyed it; so when I realized that the new novel with the cute alligator on the cover was by the same author, I knew it was for me. Part old school Clark Gable-esque romance and part Nancy Drew or Hardy Boy’s frolicking adventure, it is everything I love (that doesn’t actually exist in reality). (My mother recently referred to me as her hopeless “romanticist,” and she knows me well.)
Carrying Albert Home is written as a prequel to Rocket Boys. Hickam tells of the grim living conditions for his parents, Elsie and Homer Hickam, Sr. in a coalfield town of West Virginia where his father was content and his mother was not; because as the story goes, she’d been to Florida. (As a born and raised Floridian, I understand her discontentment completely). Upon Homer and Elsie’s marriage, Elsie is given an alligator named Albert as a wedding present from an old celebrity fling in Florida, whom she doesn’t seem to exactly be over. The alligator is an object of tension until one day Albert disposes of Homer’s pants while he is doing his business in the bathroom. Elsie is given an ultimatum: Albert, or….her husband. So begins the adventure of carrying Albert Home to Florida.
The adventures of Homer, Elsie, Albert, and a rooster (of unknown origin and significance) encompass a run-in with communist radicals, (who might actually only be Democrat Progressive Socialists) meeting John Steinbeck, and Elsie riding the “Thunder Road” as an illegal booze transporter. In addition, Homer becomes a professional baseball player and Elsie a nurse, and Homer and Albert become sailors in need of rescue by smugglers and then forced under duress to join the Coast Guard… The tales go on and on, including a visit to Key West where they meet Ernest Hemingway, but the stories signify so much more, which I leave for you to discover in your own reading of this incredibly enjoyable adventure book.
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