A coal mine saddled with unsafe conditions. Wealthy mine owners willfully ignorant of safety violations and unventilated toxic gasses threatening miners. And government officials unable to hold the mines to the most basic safety standards. It all led to the deaths of dozens of miners caught in an underground explosion.

But this isn’t the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. It’s a World War Two era mine explosion in Montana.

“Goodbye Wives and Daughters,” by Susan Kushner Resnick, is the thorough account of the 1943 coal mine explosion in Bearcreek, Montana that killed 74 miners.