The Women — Books, Beauty, & Buys

By: Kristin Hannah
Published Year: 2024
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pages: 480

Summary (Provided by Goodreads): An intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over- whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.

First Impressions

Last January I finally got around to reading my first Kristin Hannah book, The Great Alone. I finally understood why everyone was reading so much of her work. I saw she was coming out with a new book and added it without much thought. The cover isn’t my favorite when it comes to her books. I think Nightingale, Four Winds, and Great Alone have much more captivating covers. I don’t dislike this one, but I don’t know if it would’ve caught me enough to pick it up off the shelf.

What I thought

Wow.

Frances, Frankie, McGrath is 20 years old when she decides to become a hero like her brother and enlist in the Vietnam war as a nurse. When she gets to Vietnam she is thrown into the thick of it, completely taken aback. The story follows her as she befriends other Vietnam Army Nurses and completes her service. It also follows her as she comes back to America and tries to deal with how anti-veteran America is as well as how many people refuse to acknowledge that women served in Vietnam.

I have never read a historical fiction that takes lace during the Vietnam war. I only know a little bit of history because my parents were alive during that time and have a few friends who served so I’ve heard a little bit about it through them. I head about how wrong their welcome home was, if you can even call it a welcome. Honestly, I was a little hesitant diving into this subject because I didn’t think it was going to captivate me.

Hannah does a fabulous job balancing the realism and horror of the war without making it feel like she’s adding gore and drama just to shock the reader. I feel a little like I lived through Vietnam with Frankie. PTSD wasn’t a known entity until after the war and all of the veterans were struggling, so this novel tackles that as well. I have always found PTSD fascinating from a therapeutic perspective.

The only part of the story I was a little iffy on was the love story. I understood it during the war service, but then some of Frankie’s love life when she came home wasn’t my favorite. Not enough so that it will even become a blip in my memory when I’m recommending this book to people, but I would say it wasn’t my favorite part of the story.

One of my favorite things about reading historical fiction is coming away from a fictional story in which I feel like I have learned and become educated on a real event. This book left me with that feeling. I had never known that people denied women were in Vietnam, nor did I fully understand the scope of the horrors witnessed.