The Given-Up Girl is the story of Bonnie Koller, who joins the country's brightest women at idyllic Halstead College in 1969. With her roommate Hollis as her guide, Bonnie trades her skirts for jeans and her innocence for independence. An unwanted pregnancy forces Bonnie and Hollis to navigate the traps of pre-Roe America—a boyfriend consumed with fear of the draft, doctors of questionable competence, and a hospital bureaucracy rife with corruption. Their search for an abortion puts their ambitions, their friendship, and their lives at risk.

Twenty years later, Bonnie is determined to find the daughter she bore and gave up when her choices ran out. Now a successful small-town lawyer, Bonnie knows her way around a paper trail. But she doesn't know if the given-up girl wants to be found, or the truth about 1969.