Review
Author: Kristin Hannah
Reviewed by: SHA
Issue: March 2024
When we learn early that this book is about Vietnam, it generates some reluctance to go back there once again some 5-6 decades later. But Kristin Hannah is a great storyteller and she will take you in from the outset. This novel centers on the life of Frances "Frankie" McGrath, a San Diego debutante who has been living a somewhat sheltered life with her conservative parents on the beach on Coronado Island. When her beloved brother, Finley, is killed in action in Vietnam, Frankie is inspired to do her part and enlists as an Army nurse against the strong wishes of her parents. Sent to Vietnam with little experience, she is taken aback by the chaotic and bloody job of caring for soldiers who are badly wounded and dying. She is a fast learner, however, and when one of the surgical nurses finishes her tour, Frankie is asked by a doctor to replace her in surgery and, reluctantly, she takes it on. Pushed by the doctors, she becomes a first-class nurse in a front-line field hospital experiencing the frantic and difficult job of keeping severely wounded soldiers alive. In these highly difficult circumstances of war, she develops deep friendships with other nurses and doctors and ends up doing two tours in Vietnam. The story has become one of the roles of women at war as the nation turns against the war in Vietnam and the maiming and the killing continues. Surviving the battles at the front, she returns to her home in Coronado to inappreciative and lack of understanding parents, to the fury of Vietnam protestors, who take it out on the war's veterans, and the fact that people do not recognize that there were women serving their country in Vietnam. Frankie's problems multiply with uncontrolled anger, alcoholism, difficulties with the men in her life, and adapting to life at home. In her Author's Note, Hannah states that the women's heroic stories of their service in Vietnam have too often been forgotten or overlooked and little has been recorded about their service. The Women, a story intending to fix that is the story of one woman who went to war, but it extends to all women who put themselves in harm's way to serve their country. Kristin Hannah's story in this book makes for a great read from start to finish.