At a time when women are making headlines for surpassing men in educational and financial realms, and career vs. family-building conflicts define many young lives in the popular imagination, it is hard to envision the dark ages of the pre-Roe v. Wade world. It's precisely this disconnect that makes Ann Fessler's debut book, The Girls Who Went Away, compelling and valuable.

When Fessler first began interviewing mothers who had given up their children for adoption from the '50s through to the early '70s, the author, an accomplished artist and a professor at Rhode Island School of Design, thought she was preparing an audio-art project — not writing a book. But after months of research, a book seemed the best way to preserve the stories for other generations. It's all the more intriguing when you learn that Fessler is a third-generation adoptee. In a refreshing act of restraint, Fessler eschews the personal-memoir format. Instead, voices of silenced and forgotten mothers dominate these pages in the form of transcribed oral histories, punctuated by sociological insights and statistics.

Is Fessler's desire to understand her own birth mother — before she ever meets her — the impetus behind her work? The 15 careful years Fessler herself devoted to the subject of adoption — during which she sought and found her own birth mother — belie the heap of emotion and complications inherent in the adoptive process. Now, as young women who want children bemoan their limited schedules, here is book of stories that argues poignantly for women's autonomy and empowerment, reminding us that current freedoms are taken for granted at a high price.

-Cortney Rock