Late last month, the finalists for the Minnesota Book Awards were announced. This time around, I have the pleasure of knowing an author whose work was nominated for the best adult book on Minnesota. That’s Barb Sommer, and her book is Hard Work and a Good Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2008).

Sommer is an oral historian by training, and she spent years interviewing men who, as teens and young men, took part in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota. The breadth of Sommer’s research is impressive. But what’s really great is how she lets you hear the voices of “the boys,” as the men called themselves. You learn of their family’s struggles and of their own adjustments to working hard all day planting trees or building structures in Minnesota’s state parks.

Full disclosure: I know this book up close and personal because I was a freelance editor on the project, working with Barb and the Minnesota Historical Society Press staff. Here’s a good luck wish for Barb, MHS Press, and “the boys” to win the award on Saturday, April 25, 2009.

Any questions or comments? Just send me an email.