Jim Sheeler hopes that recognition for Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives means that the soldiers and families he profiled are never forgotten.

On Oct. 15 the former Rocky Mountain News reporter’s book was named a finalist in the nonfiction category of the 2008 National Book Awards.

It’s based on “Final Salute,” a special report for the Rocky that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Former Rocky photographer Todd Heisler won the Pulitzer that year for his photos in the series.

“I’m always reminded that these awards are bittersweet just because of what the families had to go through to have these stories,” Sheeler said. “It’s for them, not for me.”

Sheeler learned Tuesday night that he was a finalist. “I’m still trying to grasp it. When they called me (Tuesday) night I was skeptical. I’m a reporter — you never know.”

The National Book Award nomination notes that “Final Salute ... offers an unprecedented look at the way our country honors its dead.”

In reviewing the book, The New York Times wrote that “Mr. Sheeler took one of the great underreported stories of the Iraq war and brought it to light.”

Sheeler and Heisler — now a photographer for the Times — spent a year with the Marines stationed at Aurora’s Buckley Air Force Base who were assigned to notify families of deaths in Iraq. Sheeler now is a scholar in residence at the University of Colorado and a writing instructor.

“I’m basically trying to teach the students to write about humanity with humility,” he said.

Sheeler called from North Carolina where he was attending, not teaching, a writer’s conference. “I’m always learning about storytelling,” he said.

He earned a bachelor’s in journalism from Colorado State University, a master’s in journalism from the University of Colorado and lives in Boulder. He is the author of Obit — Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People Who Led Extraordinary Lives (Penguin).

Winners will be announced Nov. 19 at the 59th National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony in New York. Each winner receives $10,000 plus a bronze statue. Finalists receive a bronze medal and a $1,000 cash award. Sheeler said that he will donate his award to a fund for military families.

For the list of finalists, go to nationalbook.org.

2008 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTS

FICTION

Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)

Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)

Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)

Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf Press)

NONFICTION

Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)

Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton & Company)

Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday)

Jim Sheeler, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives (Penguin)

Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Harcourt)

POETRY

Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)

Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State University Press)

Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press)

Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press)

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)

Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)

Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)

E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)

Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf)

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