The latest edition of Publisher’s Weekly reports that Diana McWhorter, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Carry Me Home in 2002, is writing a book set in her home state of Alabama. Why is this so exciting that it deserves a blog post? Because she is writing about my hometown and Werner Von Braun. Von Braun was the German scientist responsible for the V-2 rockets and our space program. He moved to Huntsville in 1950 and helped develop our ballistic missle program and our space program. Living on Redstone Arsenal, he also became Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1960, where they developed the Saturn rockets. Today Marshall develops much of our space propulsion systems and also works on the International Space Station. In Huntsville, he was a big deal obviously. Huntsville is also home to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, where yours truly spent some time as a cashier in the Museum shop at the tender age of 16 (a job I loathed as any teenager forced to wear a lame-ass uniform of khaki shorts and a polo shirt might be. At least in the summer I didn’t have to wear the flight suit). So as you can see, I am very excited about this book. I am glad that a native Alabamian is writing is as well, especially a Pulitzer Prize winning one.