Authors to share story of rescuing Afghan women

When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting, many who had assisted United States efforts were left behind, likely to perish at the hands of the Taliban.

But Rebecca Blumenstein contacted a former colleague in China to facilitate the travel for 200 women, by way of Qatar, Mexico and finally Houston.

Ms. Blumenstein who was then deputy managing editor of the New York Times and is now president for editorial content at NBC News, drew support from New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and rallied a group of New York Times journalists who had worked in the region over a 20-year period to join the effort to rescue the Afghan women.  

Ms. Blumenstein also reached out to fellow journalist and friend since college at the University of Michigan, Diana Kapp — whose work has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Elle, More and the San Francisco Chronicle — to write “The Last Free Women,” capturing the dramatic escape.

Islander Lisa Dallos, founder of High10 Media, a public relations firm serving major clients throughout the country, has known Ms. Blumenstein for decades. She is responsible for bringing the two authors to Shelter Island for a presentation of their book at Aandrea Carter’s Rams Head Inn on Aug. 22.

“The book is about duty — duty to our own,” Ms. Kapp said, explaining these were people who worked side by side with American journalists and they could not allow them to be left behind, likely to face death at the hands of the Taliban.

Ms. Kapp and Ms. Blumenstein spent about four and a half years writing the book that is to be published in September. If the book starts with the Afghan women coming to the United States, the story doesn’t end there.

The authors have developed close friendships with them, helping the women and their families to settle in the United States, giving them the one gift they most wanted in their new lives — education, which was denied to females in Afghanistan.

The authors divided the writing, with Ms. Blumenstein handling the story of the escape from Afghanistan while Ms. Kapp wrote about the resettlement of the women and their families once they arrived in the United States.

Because the book won’t be out until September, there won’t be a signing at the Shelter Island event. But the authors have arranged for QR codes to order the book upon its publication and will have book plates for the authors to sign, Ms. Dallos said.

The chat at the Rams Head Inn runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 22.