Kyleah's Tree is a finalist

Kyleah Ralston's mother has died. She doesn't know where her father and brother are or even if they are still alive. She joins her friend Benjamin to leave the foster home in Kansas where they both live. Though she seeks to find her lost brother, it is her true self she is looking for—and finds, through the many hair raising adventures they encounter from Kansas to Canada.  

Kyleah's Tree, by Janet Muirhead Hill has been selected as one of three finalists in the fiction category for the Parmly Billings High Plains Book Award. Read on for the entire press release:

2009 High Plains Book Award Committee Announces Finalists

Thirteen books have been selected as finalists for the 2009 Parmly Billings Library High Plains Book Awards. All finalist books were published for the first time in 2008 and written by a regional author or writing team, or are literary works which examine and reflect life on the High Plains region.  The High Plains region includes Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota and South Dakota and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  Nominations were received from 20 publishers and several individuals in the U.S. and Canada. 

 

The finalists have been selected in five categories : Best Novel; Best Nonfiction; Best First Book; Best Poetry and Zonta Best Woman Writer.  The Best Poetry award has been added this year.  A five hundred dollar cash prize is awarded in each category. The finalist books are: 

 

Fiction

Kyleah's Tree, Janet Muirhead Hill, Raven Publishing; So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Leif Enger, Grove/Atlantic; Another Man's Moccasins, Craig Johnson, Viking/Penguin

 

Nonfiction

In Contemporary Rhythm, Peter H. Hassrick and Elizabeth J. Cunningham, University of Oklahoma Press; The Wide Open, Ed. by Annick Smith/Susan O'Connor, University of Nebraska Press; Legacy of Stone, Margaret Hryniuk, Frank Korvemaker and Larry Easton, Coteau Books

 

Poetry

Made Flesh, Craig Arnold, Ausable Press; Prairie Kaddish, Isa Milman, Coteau Books; The Baseball Field at Night, Patricia Goedicke, Lost Horse Press

 

First Book

Horses That Buck, Margot Kahn, University of Oklahoma Press; Sherlock Holmes: The Montana Chronicles, John Fitzpatrick, Riverbend Publishing; Wind River Country, Bayard Fox and Claude Poulet, Fremont County Publishing

 

 

 

Zonta Best Woman Writer

 

The Wide Open, Edited by Annick Smith and Susan O'Connor, University of Oklahoma Press; Road Map to Holland, Jennifer Graf Groneberg, New American Library/Penguin; Horses That Buck, Margot Kahn, University of Oklahoma Press

 

More than 40 local volunteers read and evaluated the nominated entries.  The top three books in each category will be sent to regional judges for final selection as award winners.  Judges are published authors in the various genres with strong ties to the High Plains region. 

“We are hoping bookstores and libraries will publicize the nominees and finalists so the public will have an opportunity to read this interesting array of books,” said Parmly Billings Library Director Bill Cochran.

Winners in each category will be announced at the High Plains Book Awards Banquet on Friday, October 2, 2009 in Billings, MT.  The event is the kickoff for the 7^th annual High Plains BookFest. For more information go to: http://highplainsbookawards.org

 

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