Congratulations to Susan Kushner Resnick for winning the Best Woman Writer award at the 2011 High Plains Book Awards on Oct. 15. The winners were announced at a banquet held at Montana State University in Billings.

Resnick’s book, Goodbye Wifes and Daughters, tells the 1943 story of an explosion in the Smith coal mine in Bearcreek, Montana, which killed all but three of the men in the mine at the time of the blast.  The book unfolds that tragic day and its aftermath through the eyes of the family members — mostly wives and children — of those miners.

Lisa Bonos of the Washington Post said, “Resnick does an admirable job of breathing life into the story of a small town's demise and its questioning of whether the disaster could have been avoided."

Click here for a complete list of the winners.

And congrats to another winner, Annette, who won a free copy of Joel Sartore’s Let’s Be Reasonable at the NLA Conference earlier this month at the Cornhusker Marroitt Hotel in Lincoln, Neb.