The world watched in shock. After the longest war in US his­to­ry, the Tal­iban swept into Kab­ul in the morn­ing of August 2021. Mar­wa, the 21-year-old sis­ter of a Times reporter, had ironed her pink dress for the first day of med­ical school. Instead, she had 30 min­utes to pack her life into a back­pack and flee. Rebec­ca Blu­men­stein, a top Times edi­tor, and a team scram­bled to evac­u­ate the Kab­ul bureau’s Afghan employ­ees and fam­i­lies. After a har­row­ing ordeal, a group of 124 land­ed in Hous­ton, part of the largest wave of refugees since the Viet­nam War. The Last Free Women is an inti­mate por­trait of four brave young women, Mar­wa, Maryam, Mur­sal, and Sami­ra, as they try to make the most of their pre­cious free­dom in Amer­i­ca — learn­ing Eng­lish, restart­ing col­lege, and forg­ing iden­ti­ties. 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.