GOODBYE WIFES AND DAUGHTERS Articles

The Washington Post's Lisa Bonos has published a positive review of Susan Kushner Resnick's GOODBYE WIFES AND DAUGHTERS. Bonos emphasizes the timelessness of Resnick's depiction of an all-too-familiar tragedy:

The coal-mining tragedy depicted in "Goodbye Wifes and Daughters" occurred nearly 70 years ago but is still an eerily familiar storyline in 2010. While mine safety and regulation have vastly improved, recent headlines out of West Virginia make journalist Susan Kushner Resnick's excavation of the 1943 explosion that killed 75 men in Bearcreek, Mont., seem not so distant from present-day disasters.

Read the entire review here.

In an op-ed for the Charleston Gazette, Gordon Simmons reviews the new book from Susan Kushner Resnick, GOODBYE WIFES AND DAUGHTERS.  Simmons says Kushner's story "shows how tragedy repeats."

CHARLESTON, W.Va -- Like any great tragedy, West Virginia's explosion and deaths at Upper Big Branch mine captured the attention of the nation. But after the last funerals, investigations by safety experts and legislative hearings are done, it will likely fade from the national memory into a cold statistic occasionally found in official and historical documents.

This consideration makes Susan Kushner Resnick's new book, "Goodbye Wifes and Daughters," all the more timely. The disaster she chronicles is eerily similar to the one West Virginia just witnessed.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Mine Explosion Echoes Tragedy From Long Ago

by Steve Pendlebury, AOL News

"(April 8) -- When Susan Kushner Resnick heard the news that at least 25 West Virginia coal miners had died in an explosion, she "just started to cry."

Tragedy struck a few weeks after "Goodbye Wifes and Daughters," Resnick's book about Montana's worst coal mining catastrophe, was published. The events unfolding at the Upper Big Branch Mine were all too reminiscent of her heartbreaking story about the blast at the Smith Mine in Bearcreek that killed 74 men in 1943.

"I just thought, 'Again?' And then I got angry," Resnick said. "Why does this keep happening? What lesson are we not learning?"

A mine with a history of safety violations, an owner accused of valuing profits over lives, a methane explosion -- followed by the agony of families waiting for answers. "All of that happens in...

Author Susan Kusher Resnik contributed a helpful blog post about the meaning of success in publishing to Beyond the Margins:

The third definition of the word success, according to my Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, circa 1987, whose cloth cover is shredded like an old dust rag from use, is this:

Favorable or desired outcome; also: the attainment of wealth, favor or eminence.

I find it odd that a forum that divides each shade of meaning so distinctly would bunch those two definitions together. Because they’re clearly different. My second book has already brought me success as defined by the first clause, but it may never get me to the second. And right now, during the third official week of its life as a published entity, that’s fine with me.

You can read the rest of the article by clicking a href="http://beyondthemargins.com/...

Guest post by Susan Kushner Resnick, author ofGoodbye Wifes and Daughters

I’ve been opening readings for my nonfiction book about a Montana coal mine disaster by acknowledging the obvious: I don’t belong with this story. What, I asked the audiences across the state of Montana, is a New Englander who has no connection to the west and had never met a miner before starting the book, doing here? Then I tell them how I found my subject. Or, rather, how the subject found me.

It all started with E.B. White. After reading The Trumpet of the Swan to my son, I decided I wanted to see the Montana swan preserve where White set a main part of the novel. A little research showed that the area isn’t as populated with trumpeter swans as it used to be and that it’s not near anything else that a conventional tourist would want to see. But Yellowstone isn’t far, and Grand Teton National Park isn’t far from that. We made plans to visit the...