March 28, 2024

Author of historical fiction, Beatriz Williams in her New York Times review said The Women by Kristin Hannah “gathers women into the experience with moving conviction.” The experience is the Vietnam War –as it was experienced by military nurses both in Vietnam itself, but also when they return to the United States. This is a novel that needed to be written, and Hannah has done it well, indeed.

A Brief Summary

Frances “Frankie” McGrath is inspired when a friend of her older brother about to leave for duty in Vietnam says to her, “Women can be heroes.” In spite of the lack of support from her family Frankie enlists and becomes an army nurse-fresh out of nursing school and totally unprepared for what she will face in Vietnam. But she learns fast and overcomes her fears. She saves lives. She honors those whose lives she cannot save. She plays hard, loves deeply, and creates a new perspective on who she is and is capable of being.

Once her tour of duty ends and she is back home she faces not only the protests against the war, but the disbelief of others, including vets, who insist there were no women in Vietnam. She struggles with how to live her life without her identity as an Army nurse, often making bad choices. She is sustained, however, by the friendships of other women with whom she served.

What I Loved

Hannah is a master both of research and an ability to translate that research into clear and evocative scenes. A friend who has read the book says it is a “flashback to our era, music, and clothing.” As a woman who was in her 20’s during those years, I recognize the name of every song and remember the bellbottoms once in my closet. I graduated from college in 1970 and so remember going on marches to protest the war and, of course, the references to Kent State, and Walter Cronkite and other people and events of the times.

I was overwhelmed and amazed by the graphic scenes of events in the evacuation hospital where Frankie worked. How could Hannah not have been an Army nurse herself! And all those powerful scenes were balanced equally effectively by down time in the O Club and other brief interludes when the wounded were not incoming. We see and feel all this through the eyes of a woman, just as we saw and felt the experiences of the soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s classic, The Things They Carried–one of my most memorable books of all time.

What I Didn’t Love

Now first let me say that I don’t demand perfection. To love and recommend a book doesn’t mean I have to love everything about a book.

I have not read all of Hannah’s books (and she has written many), but when I read The Great Alone (2017) I seem to remember feeling there were a few scenes too many of things going wrong or the character making bad decisions. I don’t recall that feeling when I read The Nightingale (2015), which I loved, and I have not read The Four Winds (2021), which is the book prior to The Women.

I didn’t feel there were too many illustrations of the ugliness of war and the heroics that took place over and over again, but I did feel once Frankie returns home that her struggles, which are all valid, could have been treated more concisely and still delivered the same point.

Oh, and the men in her life and how she responds to them….well, you read it and let me know what you think. And the ending… well, again, let me know what you think.

Do I Recommend Reading This Book?

Yes. This novel is a well-written and vivid book of those Vietnam years. Even though I lived in those years, I confess I never thought about the powerful presence of nurses during the war, and for those who were not alive then, this book brings those years to life, a part of our history we must not forget. In recent years so many novels have been written about WWII, including The Nightingale, but Vietnam has been shoved into silence. The Women gives voice to those years, especially the women’s roles. Bravo.

An Invitation

What novels about a time in history have given you a new perspective or exposed you to something you did not know? I would love to know.

NOTE:

I just listened to episode 422 of the podcast What Should I Read Next? with Anne Bogel, and if you are someone who loves “quiet” books, I recommend listening to this episode. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-should-i-read-next/id1073499086?i=1000650473926