Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction Finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction One of Npr's Best Books of 2021 A New York Times Notable Book of 2021 One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 ""The scope is sweeping, the writing is beautiful. It's an epic story worthy of the impact this one case has had on the American psyche."" - Michel Martin, Npr ""Stupendous…. If you want to understand Roe more deeply before the coming decision, read it."" - Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal A masterpiece of reporting on the Supreme Court's most divisive case, Roe v. Wade, and the unknown lives at its heart. Despite her famous pseudonym, ""Jane Roe,"" no one knows the truth about Norma McCorvey (1947–2017), whose unwanted pregnancy in 1969 opened a great fracture in American life. Journalist Joshua Prager spent hundreds of hours with Norma, discovered her personal papers - a previously unseen trove - and witnessed her final moments. The Family Roe presents her life in full. Propelled by the crosscurrents of sex and religion, gender and class, it is a life that tells the story of abortion in America. Prager begins that story on the banks of Louisiana's Atchafalaya River where Norma was born, and where unplanned pregnancies upended generations of her.