Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains
by Ruth McLaughlin (University of Oklahoma Press) has won the 2010
Montana Book Award, which honors "literary and/or artistic excellence in
a book written or illustrated by someone who lives in Montana, is set
in Montana, or deals with Montana themes or issues."
The judges
described the book as "an honest, beautifully written memoir of
McLaughlin's own and her family's struggle to survive on their isolated
wheat and cattle farm. With acute observation, she explores her roots as
a descendant of Swedish American grandparents who settled in Montana at
the turn of the twentieth century with high ambitions, and of parents
who barely managed to eke out a living on their own neighboring farm."
Honor winners are:
Everything by Kevin Canty (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Goodbye Wifes and Daughters by Susan Resnick (University of Nebraska Press)
The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)
Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photographing the Northern Rocky Mountain West by Dan Flores (University of Oklahoma Press)