Share this
The Women
By Kristin Hannah
Published by Pan Macmillan
ISBN 9781035005680
Set in the 1960/70s this is an heart wrenching /warming story and with every emotion you could possibly imagine. To be quite frank, the first few pages took getting used to as there is some perculiar tone of language, descriptions and vocabulary. It almost became a DNF - did not finish, but I am pleased that I continued to see if the story would improve. Not only did it improve, as the story unfolded it developed into compelling and gripping reading.
The saga begins with 21 year old Francis McGrath who prefers to be called Frankie, at her parent’s luxurious home on Coronado Island in Southern California as her parents throw a farewell party for her beloved older brother, Finley, before he leaves for service in the Vietnam War.
Their father has a special display on a wall in his study which he calls the ‘Heroes Wall’. Everyone featured on the wall are male members of their family who served in the Navy. No women. When Frankie questions this, one of her brother’s friends, Rye, says that women can be heroes too, but her father dismissed this as utter nonsense.
Finley leaves for Vietnam and Frankie who is studying nursing decides that, one day, she will be the first woman on this Heroes Wall. Frankie wants to serve, but she also wants to be near her brother. She tries to volunteer as a nurse, but to her disappointment neither the Navy or the Airforce will accept her because she has only had a coupe of months nursing in a local hospital after gaining her nursing degree. However the Army are delighted and keen for her to join. They quickly send her to Vietnam where nurses are needed urgently. And what an experience that was, just getting there in impractical uniforms for women, the journey and virtually no induction.
Thrown in at the deep end, she quickly finds lifelong friends with her room mates, Ethel and Barb. The description of their accomodation in the hooch, the heat and humidity, the dirt, rats and more, were enough to make me squirm. Suddenly there is an emergency arrival of wounded soldiers, when she and her colleagues have to spring into action. Meanwhile Frankie’s superior officers aren’t so sure about her capabilities as a newly minted nurse, but they soon discover she is more than up to the task and becomes a crucial asset to the medical team.
The stories in the hospital and what the doctors and nurses deal with daily is quite harrowing reading and it is easy to see why there was so much PTSD. The relationships between doctors, nurses, medical specialists, soldiers in their many roles on and off duty, injured, recoveing and during R and R is eye opening.
They needed to decompress after many hours of intense work, saving the lives and limbs of these young men. Each section Frankie worked in had a recreation area. One was called ‘The Park’ where all sorts of shenanigans went on leaving little time for sleep. Frankie’s mission was to send the boys back home alive. She lost her brother, Fin, early on and this plays an important part of her story, as do the people with whom she forms bonds as they help her in her earlier days of adjusting to life in a War zone and throughout her two tours.
The title of the book come to the fore throughout the story as once Frankie returns to “back into the real world” meaning the USA, people keep saying there were no women in Vietnam. Frankie is suffering, from the loss of her brother, her close friends and the love of her life and when she goes to get help at the Vietnam Veterans Associations they all tell her ‘there were no women were in Nam’.
Frustrated and in a broken state, her relationship with her parents is rock bottom, the loss of her nursing job at a local hospital and her nursing licence, a DUI charge and a failed relationship,Thank goodness she has her friends, Barb and Ethel. Everyone needs friends like these. They whisk her off to Ethel’s farm and the women heal together as much as they can through hard work renovating a bunkhouse to become their home, all good experience for what she does later on.
They protest and fight for recognition for the women who served in Vietnam saving many lives both military and local Vietnamese people.
Time marches on and, in this complex, multi-layered story. There are more twists and turns than you can imagine. There are many branches to the main story and just when thinking all is going to be well along comes another challenge. Yet another hurdle and I wondered if life would ever be better for Frankie and her parents.
The author’s research and as she says in the epilogue was a true labour of love over many years has made this a book I grew to love. Like Kristin Hannah, I also remember the protests on the nightly news. It is terribly sad that the women who served so valiantly were forgotten, but this book is a fitting tribute and it is good to see the photo of the Vietnam’s Women’s Memorial, Washington DC included here,
This is a brilliant read, so well written even if it has a few sentences and words that are jarring, but one I highly recommend.
The Author
Kristin Hannah is an award-winning international number one bestselling author with over 25 million copies of her books sold worldwide. Her most recent titles, The Four Winds, The Nightingale and The Great Alone won numerous best fiction awards and her earlier novel, Firefly Lane, is currently a bestselling series on Netflix. Kristin is a lawyer-turned-writer and is the mother of one son. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle
This is independent review, I am not paid by the publishers, so.If you
Liked this review - Buy me a coffee
