by Kristin Hannah ★★★★★
Editor's Note: I'm one of the few people that disliked Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale, so despite Hannah's Vietnam War-based saga The Women being one of the buzziest books of 2024, I have no plans to read it. My wife Stephanie believes "it would be a big oversight to not review this book for BarlinsBooks", so she has "taken on this important task". -Greg Barlin
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Kristin Hannah's latest novel, The Women, is truly a historical opus that delves deep into the Vietnam era. The story is told from the point of view of young Frankie McGrath, a recent nursing school graduate from Coronado island, who makes her way there following in the footsteps of her brother Finley after being inspired to believe that "women can be heroes too."
Frankie serves as a combat nurse and is quickly thrown into the horrors of a war zone while learning to become a highly talented surgical nurse. She sees the devastation that befalls the country of Vietnam, its people, and the military serving there. Too often she is the last person a soldier sees as they die, holding their hand, reading their name from dog tags, and providing comfort as they die. She develops life long friendships, has a couple of romances while in Vietnam, and says goodbye to too many colleagues and loved ones. While she lives and works in a combat zone, she knows that the U.S. government is lying about what is actually happening there and many at home are protesting the war. Her own parents tell their friends at the country club that Frankie is living abroad in Florence, ashamed that she went to war (despite the "heroes wall" of men who have served their country hanging in her father's office).
Frankie's return home is also traumatic. She experiences isolation, befuddled that the public is somehow unable to protest the war and still support the troops. Her mother won't speak to Frankie about her time in Vietnam and repeatedly tells her to forget what happened and move on with her life. She works as a nurse, but despite her extensive battlefield experience she is treated as a trainee. Even the VA provides her no support, telling her that "women didn't serve in Vietman" when she goes there to get help. The book follows Frankie through to 1982, when the Vietnam Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. as she struggles with the after-effects of war.
In her afterward, Kristin Hannah, born in the 1960s, mentions that she has wanted to write a Vietnam novel for years. She recalls fathers of her friends serving and herself wearing a POW bracelet as a child but not understanding the complexities of the war. She came up with the idea of a novel about nurses in combat zones in the late 1990s but eventually put the book aside. She notes that "The truth was, I just wasn't a good enough writer at that point. Because I knew this story was really important or at least I felt it was important, and I really wanted to be able to write it to the best of my ability."
I'm grateful that she came back to this and breathed life into a tragic and complicated time in our history. It's certainly better than The Four Winds, and I'd even rank it ahead of The Nightingale, with only The Great Alone beating it out among my favorite Kristin Hannah books. While it won't make the BarlinsBooks top books list since Greg hasn't read it (and I imagine he won't), for me this is an important five-star read.
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