The Women by Kristin Hannah

Imagine you are a veteran returning home from war after serving in the terrifying jungles of Vietnam. Then imagine that no one ever acknowledges your service. In fact, you are spat upon, shamed, and ignored by the country whose freedom you have sworn to protect.

In Kristin Hannah’s latest novel, The Women (St. Martin’s Press), Frances “Frankie” McGrath faces those heartbreaking hurdles, and more. Frankie comes of age in a dark and dangerous period in United States history — The Vietnam War. She is used to a carefree, spoiled existence on Coronado Island, California; a world of country clubs,  beach parties and private schools.

However, throughout her entire life, Frankie’s wealthy father has drilled into her the belief that there is no greater sacrifice than to serve one’s country. So, at twenty-one and fresh out of nursing school, Frankie enlists as an Army nurse to serve in Vietnam. While her parents believe women should marry, stay home and raise a family, Frankie naively believes she can make a difference in the war effort. However, life has other adventures and tragedies in store for her.

Into the Fire

To her dismay, Frankie is assigned to the Thirty-Sixth Evac Hospital, a small mobile surgical hospital located sixty miles from Saigon. She has barely unpacked when she faces soldiers with missing limbs, boys on the verge of death or emotionally devastated by the horrors of war. The situation demands that Frankie grow up, and that she quickly learn to navigate life under fire within a military pressure cooker. Alongside exemplary doctors and skilled nurses, Barb and Ethel, she thrives. Through times of heartbreak, romantic entanglements, relentless monsoons and blistering heat, constant bombings and the influx of soldiers injured at the hands of “Charlie,” the Viet Cong, the three women develop a unbreakable bond.

Frankie’s tours of duty leave her a changed woman. Back at home, Frankie discovers an America different from the one she left behind. The country is politically divided by the war, and protests for civil rights and women’s equality. Further, Vietnam veterans are viewed as pariahs, and she finds no support for either the physical or emotional battle scars left by Vietnam.

Frankie is shocked that society, her friends and family ignore her contributions to the war effort. She is repeatedly informed, “women were not in Vietnam.” But nothing could be farther than the truth. Frankie saved lives. She is a hero. However, now all she feels is shame for her participation in an unpopular, futile and expensive war which Americans now oppose. And where POWs have been forgotten and lie rotting in Vietnamese prisons.

An Author’s Work That Rings True

Hannah excels in spinning tales about heroines overcoming the tragedies defining their times in history. In The Nightingale, she wrote about sisters separated and trapped by the ravages of WWII. Her next bestseller, The Four Winds, examined women battling the Great Dust Bowl, and the sacrifices they made for a new life. In “The Women,” Hannah addresses the invisible women of the Vietnam War.

The Women is the story of Frankie’s struggles to merge her post-war illuminated self into the restrictive chauvinistic anti-war society of 1970s America. Hannah shines a light on the maltreatment of the heroic men and women veterans by their fellow Americans and a warmonger government. It is estimated that over ten thousand women served during the war in medicine, air traffic, and military intelligence. It was not until 1993 that the Vietnam Women’s Memorial was created in their honor.

While the plot of The Women is predictable, and even a bit soapy, Hannah’s message rings true. Women volunteered to go to war in Vietnam and placed themselves in harm’s way to help others. Sadly, it took our country decades to recognize their sacrifices. In this expansive novel, Kristin Hannah refuses to mince words about the courage of The Women under fire, and how they defined a generation of American heroes.