Goodbye Wifes and Daughters

One morning in 1943, close to eighty men descended into the Smith coal mine in Bearcreek, Montana. Only three came out alive. “Goodbye wifes and daughters,” wrote two of the miners as they died. The story of that tragic day and its aftermath unfolds in this book through the eyes of those same wives and daughters—women who lost their husbands, fathers, and sons, livelihoods, neighbors, and homes, yet managed to fight back and persevere.

Susan Kushner Resnick has uncovered the story behind al...