Hattie Best Polk of Lake Junaluska won the prestigious Robert Bruce Cooke Family History Book of the Year Award for her manuscript, Out of My Life and Reflections, at the North Carolina Society of Historians annual awards banquet.

Polk’s story, much like her recently published family history, is vibrant, colorful and unique in the close-knit community of Lake Junaluska.  She is an 85-year-old who lives in the home that she and her husband, Charles, built mostly with their own hands.

The books in the competition are judged by professionals in their field. One judge says this about Polk’s book: “It was an honor to judge this entry, to ‘relive Hattie’s life.” Another says, “It was so refreshing to read the stories that fashioned the life of this beautiful Southern Belle.”