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 overwhelmed 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.
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After having read Hannah’s The Nightingale earlier this year, I made sure to enter this book cautiously, alert and waiting for it to break my heart – especially considering the subject matter. As many of you may remember, my husband is military and while the experience in the novel is obviously different in many ways from my husband’s, I must be cautious to not get too panicked about the things I read. I digress.
Frankie’s story was just as touching as that of the sisters in The Nightingale and it was, of course, heavy in its own way. I learned so much about the Vietnam War and the country in general that I was honestly upset I hadn’t learned the information in school. Granted, they were minute details of the day-to-day minutiae, but to me they were important details all the same. I feel like Hannah really gave a depth to her story using these details and I sincerely appreciated it.
I was distraught, for lack of a better word, by how Frankie and the other nurses were treated when they returned home and felt so bad for all that she personally went through throughout the entire book. I will say that at one point it did seem to be a lot for one person to go through and seemed almost unrealistic however, looking back, I can definitely see that it is conceivable, if a little unusual.
Hannah did such an excellent job with writing Frankie and the hard situations she endured throughout the novel. Despite it seeming a little overwhelming at first, it was well written and seemed very well researched. I was engaged almost from the very first page by Frankie’s personality and ahead-of-her-time attitude about women and what they could do. As a feminist I loved the sentiment that Hannah imparts that women can do the hard things and endure.
All in all, I really enjoyed and appreciated this book. I listened to the audiobook through Libby (my first Libby borrow, to be exact) and was constantly trying to find time to read so that I could find out what happened next in the book. I sincerely appreciated the work that Hannah put in in her research and making sure to well represent the women that served during Vietnam and the plights they endured upon their return home. If you are a fan of Hannah’s other works or of military-themed novels in general, I would give this a shot. Even my husband is considering reading it (I also own the physical copy) because it sparked such and in-depth conversation between us about the war and the military in general.
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