Although Babb's novel was known to historians and literary scholars, and acclaimed by those who had a chance to read it, "Whose Names Are Unknown" remained unpublished. In the mid-1990s, after several of Babb's novels had been returned to print, the author showed her friend and literary agent Joanne Dearcropp a copy of the manuscript for "Whose Names Are Unknown;" Dearcropp was able to attract the interest of the University of Oklahoma Press, which focuses on books about the Dust Bowl experience. As Babb explains in an author's note, the title of the novel comes from the legal notices used by company town owners to evict resident workers who had broken rules or otherwise caused trouble. Often the owners had no knowledge or record of the identities of the workers. One such notice, bearing the heading "To John Doe and Mary Doe, whose true names are unknown ...", appears on page 220 of the novel. Following the publication of "Whose Names Are Unknown" in 2004, some scholars noted strong parallels between that work and Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath. "  In his introduction to the first edition of Babb's novel, Lawrence R. Rodgers, author of "Canaan Bound: The African-American Great Migration Novel", wrote that Tom Collins, Babb's supervisor at the migrant camp where she worked, asked her "to keep notes and was later impressed enough by the results to request a copy of them for another writer who was visiting the camp to research a novel. That writer was John Steinbeck." Writing in "The Steinbeck Review," Michael J. Meyer noted numerous "obvious similarities" between the two novels "that even a cursory reading will reveal," such as Babb's account of two still-born babies, mirrored in Steinbeck's description of Rosasharn's baby. Among other scenes and themes repeated in both books: the villainy of banks, corporations, and company stores that charge exorbitant prices; the rejection of religion and the embrace of music as a means of preserving hope; descriptions of the fecundity of nature and agriculture, and the contrast with the impoverishment of the migrants; and the disparity between those willing to extend assistance to the migrants and others who view "Okies" as subhuman. Meyer, a Steinbeck bibliographer, stops short of labeling these parallels as plagiarism but concludes that "Steinbeck scholars would do well to read Babb—if only to see for themselves the echoes of "Grapes" that abound in her prose."