The Women by Kristin Hannah

Title: The Women
Author: Kristin Hannah
Publication: St. Martin’s, hardcover, 2024
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: United States and Vietnam

Description: Frances “Frankie” McGrath has grown up in a conservative Catholic home near San Diego that reveres military service. When her beloved older brother graduates from the Naval Academy and leaves to fight in Vietnam, Frankie accelerates her nursing degree and enlists with the army herself. Her parents are horrified and do not consider her determination to serve as a nurse to be part of the family tradition. Frankie realizes when she arrives in Vietnam that she is woefully unprepared, that the conditions for nurses and medical care are appalling, and that the news of the war promulgated by the government at home is deliberately inaccurate. Still, she tries to make the best of the chaos and is aided by the two nurses with whom she shares quarters, one from a farm in Virginia and the other a black woman from Georgia. Their friendship, despite very different backgrounds, as well as support from other medical staff, will get Frankie past the first difficult weeks and help turn her into a combat nurse who saves lives. As importantly, Ethel and Barb will be there for Frankie time and again when she returns from Vietnam and tries to cope with a world that ignores the two most important years of her life and thinks she should just move on from her pain.

My Impression: This is an epic historical novel that focuses on the women who served in Vietnam and the challenges they faced after returning, as seen by a young idealistic woman from Coronado Island outside San Diego. Frankie grew up in a house with a wall of heroes, photos of family members who served their country, and after her brother leaves for Vietnam, she yearns to make her family as proud of her and to earn her place on that wall, as well as to share her brother’s experience. The Navy and Air Force are not willing to send a young nurse without experience straight to Vietnam but the Army promises to ship her out right after basic training. However, her parents are appalled by her enlistment and in a cruel twist of fate (and not the last Frankie will experience), her brother is killed in action before she even leaves California. This is a spoiler but it happens on page 20 in a 464 page book so I knew the suffering had just begun!

I don’t know if nurses who couldn’t cope with the brutal hours, endless casualties, and dangerous conditions (the recruiter promised Frankie would be at a big hospital far from the front; instead, the helicopter she arrives in gets shot at and the emergency room is a Quonset hut) got reassigned if they couldn’t handle the conditions. Thanks to new friends and her own determination, Frankie is able to cope with the horrors she sees (at least, short term), saving some lives and gently easing others’ passage into death. One thing that makes this story so vivid is how the exhausted nurses and officers relax by partying because they so desperately need to connect with people who are alive.

“That’s our ride?” Frankie said, frowning as they approached the helipad. Choppers might be big and maneuverable, but they were targets too. The enemy loved to shoot them out of the sky, and when a chopper exploded midair, there were often no remains to be found. She knew that all too well . . . .

Barb and Ethel each sat in one of the open doorframes, their feet swinging over the edge, laughing at the helicopter rose into the air and shot forward, nose down, tail up.

The noise inside the chopper was earsplitting.

As they banked left, Frankie saw Vietnam through the open doorway. The flat green swath of jungle, a brown ribbon of water, dotted with boats. White sand beaches bordered the turquoise waters of the South China Sea. Verdant mountains in the distance reached up into the blue cloud-strewn sky.

Inevitably, Frankie falls disastrously in love, more than once.

As painful as it is to read about casualties and gruesome operations, that is nothing compared to the welcome these nurses experience when they return stateside. Returning veterans are blamed for having served in an unpopular war while Frankie finds the average person doesn’t know women nurses were in Vietnam at all and veterans offices tell her to get lost. She doesn’t fit in at a traditional hospital, after having been given enormous responsibility in Vietnam, and has no support system other than Ethel and Barb at the other side of the country. Frankie’s situation is not unique but I was too young to appreciate what was happening in the United States, so learned a lot from this book. My only memory of Vietnam is a family trip to Cape Cod to say goodbye to one of my father’s closest friends who was being deployed. As we drove home, I heard my parents worrying that his size would make him an easy target. Amazingly, he survived two tours in Vietnam, serving in combat with ARVN engineers and with the U.S. First Cavalry Division, and ultimately retired as a Brigadier General.

The Women is an emotional read, with perhaps more tragedy and a lot more coincidence than is absolutely necessary, but Frankie is a convincing and all-too-human heroine about whom I enjoyed reading. The research and care that went into writing this book is very impressive – it feels like a labor of love to these undervalued nurses and a testament to female friendship.  I haven't been a huge fan of Hannah's recent books (too melodramatic or unrelentlessly miserable) so it was the topic rather than the author that interested me but I think it is the best book she has written. 

Source: Library. The Women is my third book for the 2024 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge and my first 5-star review of the year.