Reading Between the Lines
In a market dominated by WWII novels, ‘The Women’ focuses on female heroes of the Vietnam era
by Mary Jo David
Kristin Hannah powerfully describes the nurse-patient bonds, regardless of how fleeting, and the friendships forged in Vietnam. Photo credits: Amazon.com
When I first attempted to borrow “The Women” from the library, I was No. 8 on the hold list. After a month or so, when I was No. 5 on the hold list, my sister finished the book and offered to loan me her copy. I was glad for the opportunity to borrow it because, by then, I’d been hearing so many great things about this book.
Have you ever wondered if a book could possibly live up to all the hype you were hearing? Kristin Hannah’s “The Women” is one of those books. Prior to starting it myself, I heard comments like, “What a book!” “Great book,” “Sad book, but a necessary read,” and “Best book I’ve ever read.”
So you can imagine my surprise when, upon starting the book, it didn’t immediately grab my attention. In the first 20 pages or so, I recall thinking it seemed more like a beach read than a reflective, insightful book. But I kept going, and it didn’t take long to get pulled into the story once the main character—Frankie—completes her nursing training and is shipped off to join fellow combat nurses with the Army Nurse Corps in Vietnam.
In an effort not to spoil the book for those who haven’t read it yet, I won’t divulge Frankie’s reason for joining up. Suffice it to say, she came from a well-to-do family, living on Coronado Island in California, whose members valued service above most everything else. Although her father did not serve in the military, the wall of his study was plastered with photos and memorabilia of family members who did.
Throughout the story, the author drives home the point that Americans were told—and most believed—no American women were serving in Vietnam. While it’s likely no women were serving in combat in Vietnam, plenty were serving as nurses in evac hospitals, some near Saigon and others in places like the deep jungle of Pleiku, where Frankie was eventually stationed.
I found myself envisioning Frankie in a camp much like what I’d watched on television’s “M.A.S.H.,” but with less humor and more carnage. Hannah powerfully describes the nurse-patient bonds, regardless of how fleeting, and the friendships forged in a war zone. Frankie’s experiences, along with two intense romances, consume the reader for the first half of the book.
What I didn’t expect was that only half the story takes place in Vietnam. The remainder is set back in the States after Frankie is discharged. She comes home ready to put her nursing skills to good use on the home front, only to find that Vietnam vets are being spit upon and disrespected. And female Vietnam vets, well, no one even believes they exist, including staff at her local VA hospital.
At her parents’ home, where she expects to be added to the Hero Wall in her father’s home office, Frankie finds her service barely acknowledged.
To Hannah’s credit, she has written a very realistic story in that the main character is not a heroine. Sure, in the first part of the book, it starts to shape up that way. But upon arriving home, it’s Frankie who becomes the needy one, requiring the serious support of her friends and family. Barb and Ethel, her Army nurse friends from Vietnam, come through with flying colors; family and old friends—not so much.
The romance aspects are key to the story but a tad frustrating, and I found myself questioning how realistic it would have been for Barb and Ethel to—on multiple occasions—so easily cross the USA to support Frankie in person through troubling times.
But those were minor issues. What Hannah has done, with flying colors, is show us the two sides to the American perspective of the war in Vietnam. When you read “The Women,” you can easily see the injustice of Vietnam veterans being disrespected when they returned home from the horrors of war, especially considering many of them were drafted and had little choice but to serve. Likewise, if readers are being entirely honest with themselves, they have to give Vietnam protesters credit for holding the government to task and likely being responsible for forcing the end to a war that was getting worse by the minute.
Unlike the World War II setting of so many of today’s popular novels, I have personal recollections of the Vietnam War era as a young teenager. Even so, like all novels I read by Kristin Hannah, I came away feeling as though “The Women” taught me some things I didn’t know.
Most importantly, Frankie’s experiences reminded me that, yes, women can be heroes.
Mary Jo David
Mary Jo David is a retired business and technical writer who contributes occasional book reviews to Stockbridge Community News. She and her husband reside in Gregory.
