Unreasonable Women: Three Stories of Violence, Imprisonment, and Extraordinary Survival

A groundbreaking account of how the legal system punishes those it purports to protect, told through the stories of three unforgettable women

When award-winning journalist Justine van der Leun began researching the issue of criminalized survival, she was astonished to see women being imprisoned for protecting themselves against abuse. This sparked an intensive, years-long into how survivors are targeted for prosecution, leading her to collect more than a thousand personal accounts from women’s prisons across America.

In Unreasonable Women, van der Leun tells the propulsive, shocking, and intimate stories of three extraordinary women who, finding themselves caught in the direst circumstances, had to kill to survive. Tanisha is a spirited Michigan mother determined to help authorities solve a cold case, whatever the consequences. Jema is a softhearted Missouri factory worker struggling to keep her family together while navigating a dangerous relationship. TC is a bold Californian trying to escape generations of trauma and a toxic family environment. In each case, the women's childhood abuse was replicated in adulthood—until they were forced to make an impossible choice.

A work of literary reportage that reads like a crime novel, Unreasonable Women is the result of seven years of unprecedented research and on-the-ground reporting in U.S. prisons. It is the story of women and violence in America, a wake-up call about a broken system, and the moving narrative of three women who find hope and humanity in the unlikeliest of places.

“Remarkable . . . A devastating portrait . . . A riveting, heartbreaking account of three women’s experiences with violence and a system that perpetuates abuse.” - Kirkus

“Unreasonable Women is a rare and formidable work of narrative nonfiction. Grounded in years of exacting research and rigorous investigation, Justine van der Leun exposes a brutal truth: When women survive violence, the state often punishes them for it. With profound empathy and moral precision, she compels us to look beyond headlines and verdicts to the layered histories of abuse, poverty, silence, and disposability that precede a single violent act. The book is as propulsive as any crime narrative but far more unsettling. Van der Leun never turns away from pain, nor does she allow the reader to do so. This is essential journalism that fundamentally reshapes how we think about justice, survival, and the enduring peril of being a woman in America.” - Brian Goldstone, author of the Andrew Carnegie Medal finalist There Is No Place for Us

“What happens after a woman fights back and kills the man who’s trying to kill her, after the credits roll? For most of them, it turns out, the answer is prison. Unreasonable Women takes us into the suffocating web of a system that punishes a victim for not mutely suffering the violence that is her birthright, for fighting back, and for not being a perfect victim: a dead one.” - Julia Ioffe, author of the National Book Award finalist Motherland

“Reading Unreasonable Women is an enraging, engrossing experience. Through the heartbreaking stories of Tanisha, Jema, and TC, and astoundingly detailed (and original) research on hundreds more incarcerated women, Justine van der Leun demonstrates the impossible bind of those mired in intimate partner violence.” - Sarah Weinman, author of Without Consent

“A rigorously reported and quietly devastating reckoning with how survival can be misunderstood in a courtroom. By returning these women to the center of their stories, Justine van der Leun widens our understanding of justice.” - Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Devil in the Grove

“Unreasonable Women is a masterful deep dive into the keen survival instincts of three women who were pushed far past the edge, and a no-holds-barred indictment of a legal system that fails survivors by design. Trust me, you should read this book.” - Roxanna Asgarian, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award winner We Were Once a Family

“I could not put down Unreasonable Women. It captures, with great care, the relentless pace of abuse and predation against the survivors of gender-based violence. Moving between history, scholarly insight, and years of careful reporting, it tells the story of three women from three different parts of the country trapped in the cycle of abuse, blame, and punishment that follows the women and girls who survive. And it does so without romanticizing their lives. This is the book we need if we’re ever to confront our failure to see the nation’s most vulnerable women as full human beings.” - Reuben Jonathan Miller, MacArthur Fellow and author of Halfway Home