THE WOMEN, by Kristin Hannah
Macmillan, $37.99
It’s 1965 in California and this story about Vietnam war nurse Frankie McGrath starts with Frankie’s brother, Finley, leaving for Vietnam. Her father is very proud of Finley, as all the men in the family are “war heroes”. Frankie decides that women can be heroes too, and she signs up as an army nurse and leaves for Vietnam.
Through Frankie’s eyes the reader learns about the overwhelming chaos and destruction of war, the human tragedy, and the trauma experienced by the soldiers and the medical staff. Nothing is glossed over. As a surgical nurse, Frankie is exposed to mass casualties on a daily basis. It’s only thanks to her moral compass and the close bond with fellow nurses that she makes it through her two years in Vietnam.
The second part of the book is about Frankie’s life after coming home. The Vietnam war has become controversial, and veterans are despised. They did not receive the hero’s welcome that the World War II veterans did. Her parents are ashamed of her, local citizens spit on her, and she cannot find suitable employment. She is traumatized and suffers from nightmares. She tries to find help but gets turned away from Veteran Support Services because they don’t believe that there were women in Vietnam or because they were not in combat situations. She miscarries, possibly because of exposure to Agent Orange, the herbicide mixture used by the U.S. military to defoliate trees. There is no actual real-life Frankie, but Frankie’s character is representative of the nurses whom the author interviewed or read about. The author used her research to give voice to the pain and suffering experienced by the female war nurses during and after the Vietnam war.
However, there are some lighter moments in this harrowing story when we read about the friendship between Frankie and her bunk-mates Ethel and Barb and thank goodness for fiction, there are some love affairs as well. I devoured the 480 pages of this fast-paced book and emptied an entire box of tissues in the process.
Wilma
