The Last Free Women, by Rebecca Blumenstein and Diana Kapp

An inside account of the extraordinary effort by the New York Times to evacuate more than 200 Afghans in the wake of the fall of Kabul, highlighting four exceptional young women as they forge a new life in America.

Release date: Sept. 8, 2026

“I’d like to meet them all. The strength, the courage. I am humbled by them. Confronting deep loss, trauma, and the challenge of starting over, they navigate education, identity, and belonging in an increasingly divided America. Together, their remarkable stories explore the complexities of freedom itself.”

“Rebecca Blumenstein and Diana Kapp tell the vivid, unforgettable story of four Afghan women whose lives were transformed by war and exile. Their new lives in America demonstrate the power of courage, ambition, dignity, family, and, ultimately, hope.”

“This riveting, immersive account poses a question we all hope we could answer well: How would I have fared—as a refugee making a miraculous escape to a new life, or as one of the ordinary people who answered the call for help? This book is an antidote to cynicism and a tribute to grit and generosity; it simply blew me away.”

“This story of courage and resilience captures the human cost of conflict and the unbreakable spirit of those who refuse to be silenced.“

“At a time of such demonization of immigrants and refugees, and a moment of much tension between the Jewish and Muslim communities, this book is a reminder of the values we share and how much our historical narratives rhyme.”

“The group’s harrowing escape from Kabul unfolds like a thriller, and the women’s pursuit of the American Dream—the right to simply live and work in a free society—is an inspiration. If you want to know what makes America great, you’ll find the answer in the immigrant women in these pages.”

Kabul; August 15, 2021:
The Taliban were coming.

The world watched in shock. After the longest war in US history, Kabul fell in a morning. Desperation reigned. Some clung to the wheels of departing airplanes, only to fall to certain death. Reprisal was near-assured for anyone who had worked with Americans.

Marwa, the 21-year-old sister of a Times reporter, was in the vanguard of a fast-modernizing Afghanistan. That morning, she had ironed her pink dress for the first day of medical school. Instead, she had 30 minutes to pack her life into a backpack.

Across the world, Rebecca Blumenstein, a top Times editor, and a daring team scrambled to evacuate their Afghan employees and families. After a harrowing two-week ordeal, the refugees landed in Houston, the largest privately sponsored group in modern American history.

THE LAST FREE WOMEN is an intimate portrait of the journey of Marwa, Maryam, Mursal and Samira as they seek to make the most of their precious freedom in America. They start over — learning English, repeating college and forging identities — while back home, the Taliban bans the education of girls and women from leaving their homes alone.

“Why is it always about the women?” Mursal despairs. Their gripping account wrestles with women’s rights to basic freedoms and aspirations. It is also a meditation on duty — what we owe to those who help America abroad, those who seek freedom and the humanity that links us all.

For media inquiries:
Kaitlyn Kurosky, [email protected]

The Authors

Rebecca Blumenstein is President, Editorial of NBC News, where she manages newsgathering and operations around the world, digital and flagship shows including NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press and Dateline. From 2017 to 2023, she was a Deputy Managing Editor at the New York Times and worked closely with New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger as Deputy Editor, Publisher’s Office.

She spent 22 years as a reporter and editor at the Wall Street Journal, rising to Deputy Editor-in-Chief. She led the China team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. She was named chair of the board of the Columbia Journalism Review in August 2022 and was named to the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship in 2009.

Diana Kapp is a journalist who writes frequently about the intersection of women and modern culture and has traveled in Afghanistan to report on the education of girls in the country’s rural northern provinces. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Elle, More, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Marie Claire, among others. She is the author of two YA books profiling female change-makers, Girls Who Run the World and Girls Who Green the World.

Kabul; August 15, 2021:The Taliban were coming.

The Authors

Kabul; August 15, 2021:
The Taliban were coming.