The Women

The Women by Kristin Hannah Book Review

I have been tasked with yet another book club book. 

I am in the era of book clubs apparently (and I’m not complaining). 

The Women by Kristin Hannah is another example of a book I would never normally read. It’s not YA and it’s about war. In general, I’m not the biggest fan of fighting or bloodshot which usually discounts any war books.

However, since I had to read this for my school book club and it's from the perspective of a female nurse during the Vietnam War instead of a soldier, I was cautiously optimistic. 

Turns out, I really enjoyed it. 

For people like me, people who don’t like war or fighting or bloodshed, this book is not for you. That being said, I thought The Women offered a fascinating take on a historic event but told from the view of a group largely marginalized and forgotten: women. 

Namely, the novel follows Frances “Frankie” McGrath and her story of becoming a hero by serving as a nurse in the Vietnam War following the death of her older brother, Finley.

Wanting to make her parents’ proud and get her photo tacked onto her fathers’ hero wall, Frankie enlists as a nurse without any training or experience. 

Naive and doe-eyed from her coddled life on Coronado Island, California, Frankie finds out very quickly that life in a war is worlds away from the country clubs and sparkling oceans from home. 

With soldiers and civilians alike coming in with chest wounds, missing limbs, and burned bodies, Frankie quickly casts away the shell of her former self and adapts to life in ‘Nam. She grows and learns and leans into her one passion: nursing. 

The first half of the book is about Frankie’s years in Vietnam and the horrendous things that she witnesses and deals with on a daily basis. The details are…atrocious.

As a book about war, this was expected, but still harrowing. To read about the appalling wounds and injuries that American soldiers and Vietnam villagers suffered and endured are heart-wrenching beyond belief. 

It was almost as much of a relief to me as a reader as it was to Frankie when she finishes her second tour in Vietnam and goes home, a concept that seemed as far away and as foreign as Vietnam once seemed to a sheltered girl in the 1960’s. 

The whole second half of the book is almost as terrible as the first, but in a less gruesome sense. Frankie’s life since coming back is less than ideal…

Being assaulted at home with anti-war sentiments, people calling her a baby killer, her parents telling their Coronado community that she’s been away in Florence, people unwilling or hesitant to talk about the war, and on and on it goes. 

Frankie, who expected people to be proud of her, drowns instead in her own shame and suffering, sending her down a dark spiral accompanied by addiction, drunk driving, and the betrayal of her own morals, values, and beliefs. 

All in all, The Women is exactly what you would expect of a war novel. It includes grisly injuries beyond most people’s imaginations, the struggle to reintegrate into one’s life back home, the pull of addiction in order to numb the pain and nightmares, and the eventual finding of one’s self in the aftermath of so much pain and suffering. 

The one special caveat of this book, is, as its namesake suggests, about the women. Over and over again in the novel a variety of people say, “There were no women in Vietnam.”

Lies. There were women. Important, significant, brave women who made a difference. 

This book is their legacy, one that will never be forgotten. 

Recommendation: War books are not my cup of tea. The fighting, the sadness, the agony—it’s usually too gut-wrenching for me to consume. However, The Women is such an important tale detailing the heroic women of the Vietnam War, their contributions, and their lives.

This book taught me so much, as well as deeply saddened me to know that such a horrific event took place in human history that cost countless precious lives. 

This is not a book I picked up willingly and I probably won’t read another war book for some time (or ever), but I appreciated all that I learned. It showed me how fleeting life is and made me grateful for the life I have now. 

Any book that can remind me of my own mortality (and make me cry) is pretty powerful in my opinion. 

Score: 7/10