Book Review: Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam

Carrying Albert Home
by Homer Hickam

After reading, the The 100 Year Old Man Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Robert Gustafsson, I was on the hunt for another adventure journey sort of read, and I found it, and fell in love, when I found Carrying Albert Home, by Homer Hickam. From the cover with an embossed title and a happy alligator, to the silent movie style intermissions in between the “acts” of the journey, to the relationship and lack of one between Elsie and Homer, and finally the rooster who is repeatedly included for unknown reasons . . . this book felt like it was written for me.

I enjoyed the strong characters, including the critters, as well as the journey that provides a backdrop for meetings with various personalities both real and fictional, and adventures that left me wondering “Did that happen?” “COULD that happen?” We may never know. Together Elsie and Homer Sr. wrote the story of their post marital courtship, and we get to go along for the ride as their son puts it together with gentle humor.

The main character (other than the wedding-gift-alligator) is Elsie. She’s a vivacious woman, the kind of woman that everyone admires, and her husband Homer is strong, honest, handsome and hardworking, and it’s only Elsie who can’t see what a catch she has. You can’t blame her: all her life she wanted to escape the coal mining town of . . . Coalwood. It’s just too small for her. But how can you marry a coal miner AND escape the life of being a coal miner’s wife? It’s a conundrum that both Elsie and Homer try to solve on their journey to Orlando to take “Albert” home.

As Albert would say, “yeah, yeah, yeah.”

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The 100 Year Old Man Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, by Robert Gustafsson, or On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 85 Years Old, by Hendrik Groen.]

[ official Carrying Albert Home page on the official Homer Hickam web site ]

Recommended by Carrie K.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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