The Women – Kristin Hannah (audio narrator Julia Whelan)

Wow. I read The Women via an audio edition. How to start? Not everyone will be able to read this book. It is raw and for many of us who were old enough to be US citizens during the Vietnam war and the years that followed it, this brings home so many issues, some that made me feel devastated all over: I wrote my first anti-war poem about “Johnson’s war” in 1966. That’s the year this novel begins with Finley McGrath, Francis (Frankie) McGrath’s big brother’s farewell party. A graduate of Annapolis, he’s heading to Vietnam. Frankie is in nursing school. Their dad, who was disqualified from serving in WWII values men who served the country in the military. He honors them on his “heroes wall.”

Women are to become good Catholic wives and raise these heroes. But Frankie feels drawn to serve and soon after she graduates from nursing school she signs up to go to Vietnam as a combat nurse for the Army. I was and remain opposed to that war and will to my dying day despise the government’s decisions relating to Vietnam. But I always respected the guys who were drafted or those who signed up because they believed it was the right thing to do. I only condemned those service people who committed war crimes, not those who served in general. In any event, Kristen Hannah masterfully captures three things that I found stupendously brilliant: (1) The experience first hand of what it meant to serve in Vietnam. It rings true with accounts I’ve heard over the years from men who were there; (2) The dramatic cultural, social and political changes that characterized the country between 1966 and 1973. Those I lived; and (3) The music of the era, which I remember well. This book has given me scads of earworms. ”Tie a Yellow Ribbon” anyone? What an ingenious way to plant us on the spot where a song we all know is spinning.

Central to the story is the close friendships Frankie makes with two other nurses, Barb who is an activist Black woman with a Black Panther Vietnam Veteran brother and Ethel, who plans to return to her farm in rural West Virginia and study to be a veterinarian. Frankie, raised in a well to do family housed on a beach front property on Coronado Island near San Diego is naive and inexperienced. Suddenly she is caring for men with parts blown off and dealing with the attention of various kinds of guys while learning how to be a nurse in conditions that are primitive and patients with injuries that are unimaginable. As Ethel warned her when she first encountered amorous officers, she was to be careful because the men “lie and they die.”

Eventually, we follow Frankie home and live through her experience with the hostility of some Americans to returning vets. Her family is uncertain how to take the new Frankie with war stories to tell. Notably, she finds that no one seems to get that women served in Vietnam and most people don’t care too much about how any veterans are treated. As we all know, many were (and still are) suffering emotional trauma, addiction and physical issues arising from being Vietnam Veterans. Frankie is not spared.

We are exposed to the aftermath of the battles, the attacks, the villagers burned by napalm, the lack of foliage due to agent orange, the burgeoning recognition that there is a problem with all the chemicals being used in Vietnam that will impact all those who were there, the outsiders and the natives. The hospital scenes are written so brilliantly that I had to turn off the recording to take some deep breaths along the way. This is not MASH, although the fun parts of MASH are there in the officer’s club on R & R and at going away parties. The radio guy who is the “Radar” character is called “Talk Back.” The characters are well drawn, including Frankie’s family and their country club/Naval Base set; Frankie’s various friends and colleagues overseas; the villagers and children, civilian victims of war; those populating organizations like Vietnam Veterans Against The War and the various peace organizations; the US government and the Veteran’s Administration.

I am so glad to have had the opportunity to listen to this novel. It is memorable. It is realistic. It portrays a balanced view of what it was like to take sides about this war and to change one’s mind along the way. It helps explain what drove some privileged Americans to join in while others figured out every possible way to avoid the draft. Until the college exemptions were removed and every eligible man was subject to a draft lottery It was largely people of color and those from poor backgrounds who fought this war. It is painful to remember but also so important not to forget.

This book is immersive. It should be a movie. The narration in the audio version is excellent. It would also be a good print read.