An anger inducing, emotionally unrelenting heavy read showcasing the role that female combat nurses played in the Vietnam War and the horrendous treatment they recieved once back home.

It was a difficult but engrossing read that has now made me want to read the non-fiction book that the author cited in her acknowledgments.

Highly recommend.

Kristin Hannah just gets better and better with every book she writes. This is a phenomenal and powerful read that deserves a place in book collections everywhere.

Such a powerful book and a look into the world of the women who served in Vietnam, and even more powerfully to the lives they returned to. Beautifully written with relatable characters and highs and lows throughout this is an unputdownable read. Thank you to Netgalley for the advance reader copy.

I truly believe that Kristen Hannah just gets better and better. Though it tore me apart, i couldn’t put this book down. You are so drawn to the characters, the sisterhood and the romance. Kristen Hannah has a way of writing that drawls you right in. You can picture everything so vividly. This story looks at an overlooked part of history so it is so important. And she has done it beautifully.

I was completely engrossed by this incredible piece of historical fiction, covering a period of history and viewpoint I’d never read about before. All the Vietnam stories I’ve encountered have fallen into two categories and were made for the big screen; combat movies like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, or the more domestic based aftermath of war at it’s best in the excellent Coming Home with Jane Fonda and Jon Voigt. I’d never considered that there would be women in Vietnam, which seems crazy since I’d avidly watched MASH when it was rerun in the 1980’s. The series set in a field hospital showed women in the operating theatres, as members of the US Army Medical Corps. Yet, I’ve never encountered anything that showed them in Vietnam, so I was fascinated by Frankie’s story; her personal experiences as well as the politics and societal changes around her tours of duty. What struck me most was how this war ripped the generation gap wide open. Most people my age will remember the Paul Hardcastle single ‘19’ and for me the most stark line in it was ‘none of them received a hero’s welcome’. It struck me how different the government and public response was to these veterans, the majority of whom were no less brave or noble than the WW2 veterans their fathers had been. The author deals with all these themes in a story about the women that served in Vietnam, the women that America forgot.

Frances McGrath is your typical All American teenage girl, living with her family on Coronado Beach. She has memories of growing up on that beach, swimming and surfing with her brother Finley. She is from a good family and expectations are that she will have the ‘right’ marriage and become a mother. However, things change when Finley makes a huge decision. He’s enlisted for Vietnam. It’s no surprise that he might go into military service at some point. Frankie’s dad has a wall in his office called the ‘Hero’s Wall’ where every family member’s military service is celebrated with cuttings, photos and medals. All the men, anyway. Yet not many of their friends and family members have sons who’ve voluntarily enlisted for Vietnam. There are ways of avoiding the draft, depending on who you know. Yet Finley enlists of his own accord, possibly believing the American government’s assertions that they must fight communism in Vietnam, lest it become even more widespread. Within weeks there’s a knock at the door; Finley has been killed in action. In a whirlwind of grief Frankie starts looking into her options. She wants to honour her brother and become a hero worthy of her father’s wall. Both the Air Force and Navy need a nurse to complete a long period of training before they’re posted to work in the field. However, if she enlists in the US Army, they’ll post her out to Vietnam after basic nursing training. Much to her parent’s shock Frankie is soon on her way to Vietnam.

The author creates such an incredible sense of place, I was in Vietnam with Frankie. The all pervading humidity and dampness of everything actually made me feel grubby. There’s a red dust blowing everywhere, that sticks to the constant sheen of sweat on Frankie’s skin and gets into every wrinkle. Frankie’s kitbag and everything she owns takes on the smell of mildew and she never feels dry. At first the bursts of gunfire and explosions in the jungle are surprising and Frankie is anxious, but soon they just become the everyday backdrop to her work. The ‘whump- whump’ of the helicopters arriving with MASCALS (mass casualties) control when she eats, sleeps and relaxes. The first experience of a MASCAL is shocking and Frankie does freeze, but the surgeon she’s working with talks her through it, let’s her know that he trusts her and she can do it. Gradually it becomes easier, although their injuries and the emotions of triaging these men can stay with her. If someone is beyond saving they are left to die, while they operate those they can save. It isn’t just the soldiers though, the unit treats Vietnamese soldiers and locals caught in the crossfire. The use of napalm and the injuries it caused really has stayed with me, the jelly like substance sticking to the casualty’s skin and keeps burning. Frankie is soon a first class combat nurse, that’s not to say these experiences become easy, they just become the norm. When we tuck trauma away in a box without processing it, it sits until we’re ready to open the lid or until a new experience forces that lid open. Usually when we least expect it. Her new relationships keep her going, especially those with her friends and fellow nurses Ethel and Barb. They are the glue that hold each other together and while men may come and go, the bond these women build is lifelong and loyal. That’s not to say there aren’t men. Frankie falls in love with Jamie, the surgeon she works with and the war only intensifies those feelings. There’s also the constant fear of losing them. Later on, a face from the past reignites feelings of first love but brings with it so many complications.

Frankie’s return and adjustment to everyday life on her return from war becomes yet another battle. Now she’s completely safe it’s as if all the feelings she had in Vietnam are bubbling to the service, manifesting in physical and mental symptoms. Her parents are relieved she’s home in one piece, but they don’t seem proud of what she achieved and her accolades don’t make the hero’s wall. She doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. Here Barb and Ethel are worth their weight in gold, taking Frankie in when she needs to get out of California and spending time talking through their experiences. No one else will ever get her like these women. Their lives do move forward though and Frankie just seems stuck. I thought this part of the story was beautifully done and represents so much research and care on the author’s part. She is very aware that although Frankie isn’t real, women did live through these experiences and had to find ways to reconcile their memories of war and their hurtful return to an ungrateful homeland they’d put their lives on the line for. It was as if the world had shifted on it’s axis while they were in the jungle. I was longing for Frankie to have a happy ending, because I thought she deserved it and I thought she still had so much to offer. I learned so much about a conflict I’d only experienced through film and usually from a male perspective. I was completely immersed in Frankie’s world and didn’t want to let it go.

📖 BOOK REVIEW 📖
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#TheWomen by @kristinhannahauthor #macmillanpublishers

➡️for synopsis

I’m not even sure how to begin a review of a book of this magnitude; there is so much packed into it worth discussing that my review would never end.

So I’ll start with saying this is my 2nd book by this author, a polar opposite to the first The Great Alone, but loved just as much. We follows Frankie’s story from volunteering to nurse in Vietnam to her unwelcome return back to America and what a story and an emotional ride it was.

Frankie is such a strong lead character that you can’t help but root and feel all the emotions with her throughout everything that comes her way. The plot kept a pace, my interest and raised awareness of something I knew very little about.

Although this is Frankie’s war, the overall theme of this book was really the strength and role of women in society during the 1960s/70s and female relationships - friendships, mother and daughter, parents, siblings, working and romantic all of which are explored, pushed to the limits and questioned here. Especially the notion that no women served in Vietnam which meant Frankie didn’t get the care or recognition she needed to heal.

The writing was captivating, the format easy to follow using a linear timeline with Frankie remaining thoughout a steadfast, relatable and emotive narrator. The research needed to make this book a reality is phenomenal and I liked how she didn’t give the typical happy ever after and how that was ok too. I could go on and on forever raving about how much I loved this book but best to stop here and just say I LOVED it!

With thanks to the author #KristinHannah, @netgalley and #macmillian for allowing us to read this one early!

PUBLISHING: Feb 15th.

-EMILY

@the_book_girls_1

Absolutely fantastic, Kristin is fast becoming my favourite author! An absolutely heartbreaking, gripping and beautiful story set in Vietnam about how love shines brightly even in the darkest times, and the incredible sacrifices people make in wartime.
Impossible to resist, impossible to predict, impossible to put down . . . Five shiny stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I enjoyed the themes The Women explores - I learned a lot about wartime during Vietnam and the experiences women had during and after the fact. I felt the pain Frankie experienced during her tours, the loss of her friends and the men around her, as well as her rage upon returning to a world where her pain just didn't fit in anywhere. I also enjoyed the relationship she had with her friends, although I do wish we got to hear more about Ethel and Barb and the experiences the girls had together dealing with the mental struggles of returning to post-war life. This is where the story falls a bit flatter to me, it felt like Frankie's main turmoil was presented in her romantic relationships with men, and that sidelined all the other poignant and important themes.

I finished reading The Women by Kristin Hannah last week and here are my thoughts.
.
.
Kristin Hannah is one of my favourite authors of women-centric stories with substance. The Nightingale by her is still one of my favourite historical fiction. A book that even inspired me to write Letters In Ice. Winter Garden, The Great Alone and The Four Winds are some of her other books which greatly satisfied the reader in me. I was elated when my request to read The Women was approved by @NetGalley. I mean, I would have still read it anyway. But getting a book approved is something else altogether. But I digress.
.
.
The Women is the story of a young Frances “Frankie” McGrath who finds herself in Vietnam in 1965 as an army nurse. It is the story of a young, inexperienced Frankie, lost and numb in the chaos and catastrophe of the Vietnam War. It is the story of her growth, the trauma she experiences there, her friendship with two of her fellow nurses and her life after the war.
.
.
When we think of wars, we think about men, their lives lost and the trauma after survival. But somehow, we forget the experiences of women in combat or as nurses on the frontlines. The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich showed how women who had fought in the Second World War were shunned. The stories of the women code breakers in Bletchley, or even the SOE executives took decades to be acknowledged. And in the present day too, we know that war doesn't leave women and children unaffected. In The Women, Kristin Hannah explores the subject of the women veterans of the Vietnam War being disregarded, and their existence disavowed.
.
.
Frankie comes back from the Vietnam War, broken and traumatised, only to be ignored by a country which fails to honour its veterans for putting their lives on the line for a war waged by the politicians. Her experiences are ridiculed and denied by her family and her whole country. Does Frankie get lost, drown in her nightmarish experiences or does she find a way to survive? Is there redemption for her country and herself? This is what The Women is about.
.
.
While this was a good book no doubt, it didn't manage to tug at my heartstrings like most of her books had, despite the subject. I somehow expected more. Maybe, it was not the book, just my expectations which dampened the experience slightly for me.
.
.
Well, that's all for today.
.
.
Ciao!

This is one of those books I knew I’d be sorry to finish. I feel like I want to read more. The main character Frankie is a well-off young Californian who volunteers as a nurse to serve in Vietnam in the late 1960’s. She is soon faced with the horrors of war, attempting to treat and save the casualties of the conflict. The author does not spare us from the horrendous injuries and fatalities.

The themes of loyalty, friendship and personal suffering are beautifully explored, both in the first half of the book and again in the second part when the nurses return home and are dealing with everyday life while coping with the memories.

I can’t write much more without giving away some of the plot; all that’s left to say is read this book, you’ll love it.

My thanks to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

The Women by Kristin Hannah* is just a brilliant read from start-to-finish. I’m not sure what secret sauce Hannah puts in her writing but I scarcely find a dud among her works (except Another Life, which I did not like). As with most of her books, women and the female experience are at the forefront of the story and no one does historical fiction through a female lens better than Kristin Hannah.

The year is 1965 and the Vietnam War is already in its tenth year of what would ultimately be a conflict that lasts twice that. Frankie McGrath is happily ensconced in her sunny, upper class, Conservative Californian community where the battlefields of Hà Nội are an inconceivable reality for all around her. However, when brother Finley enlists, earning the hard-won pride of their stoic Irish immigrant father, Frankie finds herself drawn to a similar path and uses her nursing degree to join the Army Nurse Corps and follow Finley to ‘Nam.

What unfolds is an incredibly immersive, emotional and epic journey for Frankie, with a whole cast of characters, in both Vietnam and at home, that are so well recognised that even those who are only featured fleetingly leave a lasting impression. The descriptions of “a war that should never have happened” are both startling and important and I found myself reaching for the tissues more than once as Frankie and her veteran found family realise that the American Dream is a lie and that nothing could have prepared them for what they would witness in both the heat of battle and the return to a changed, hostile America that has no interest in support returning vets, let alone those who were female and served behind the scenes.

I spent a few weeks in Vietnam in 2018 and I have never forgotten the pit in my stomach as I learned about the American occupation through the native eye which offers a very different, much more barbaric perspective than Western society was privy to through the American military’s propaganda machine, even all these years later. The Women encapsulates all of those atrocities and then some, moving me to tears more than once. PTSD, womanhood, mental health and addiction are explored with a visceral vulnerability that endears you to Frankie, even though she herself may not be the most likeable person. A stunning feat of historical fiction (although I was questioning why an Irishman - her father - would be so peeved that he could never enlist?!).

What a read!! I have read and loved everyone of this authors stories. I’m not keen on historical fiction however I adored this story. This is a powerful read and a memorable one that will stay with me for a long time.

The heroine Frankie is a courageous young woman who signed up as a nurse in Vietnam. Her story needs to be listened to by so many more people.

I’m already looking forward to seeing what this author writes next.

I liked this book. It charts the life of Frankie who volunteers for Vietnam as a nurse to follow her brother who had just enlisted.

The narrative focuses on how Frankie feels and is perceived by others on her return. While she has sacrificed her mental health and saved countless lives, everyone she encounters back home is either ashamed or a hater. No one recognises that women were in Vietnam or the damage it caused. Even her father pretends she took a trip to Florence.

Only when the world begins to appreciate nurses contributions and the horrors faced can she turn the corner on her life.

Things I loved about The Women:
- The female friendships. The way those women will do anything for each other really made me think about how powerful we can be when we side together.
- The exploration of mental health and trauma, and the layers of pain that can come when your experience is wiped away or ignored.
- The storytelling: I didn't want to put this book down.

Things I wanted more of:
Jamie :)

I feel like there's a sequel in this story... I know I'd love to read it.

Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher (Pan MacMillan) for providing me with an ARC copy of the book!

This is the first book I have read by Kirstin Hannah and after finishing it I’ll be reading all her back catalogue so impressed was i by this one... Its the story of women who are in Vietnam as nurses during the Vietnam War. A subject I must confess to knowing very little about. Well this book was an emotional and at times heart wrenching read and I loved every chapter.

I really enjoyed this book, it is historical fiction and one of my favourite genres. It is based in 1965 during the Vietnam War.
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. In 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future.
When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
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.
This book kept me enthralled, lots of twists and turns and cliffhangers, it was impossible to guess what was going to happen. This book kept me reading late into the night.

A Kristin Hannah novel rarely disappoints as I have grown to enjoy her novels recently. This is her latest and taps into ideas she considered way back in the 1990s as a young writer. I guess her experience now and mature writing alongside the way her plots instantly involve the reader again prove the richness of her skill.
Americans still have a love/hate relationship with talk of the Vietnam War and in Britain we may be confined by MASH on TV (of which I was a huge fan) and the politicians and protests of the time in the fallout from the failures of the war and the huge death tolls on all sides.
As of the women who were involved in the campaign - the only women I recall were the Vietnamese women shown on war coverage with their hats and often footage of them escaping bombing and the infamous naked girl photographed after an Agent Orange attack.
The characters are believable - more so in situ in Vietnam I thought - but the fallout of Frankie's return from the war into her despair and PTSD built to a dramatic conclusion and explored the anti war campaigns across America.
Usually the love/romance component of Hannah's novels isn't to the fore in such a way as in this story. Frankie's naive approach to men was perhaps at times slightly unbelievable and I felt her pain particularly for the lack of honesty in Rye's character. But there were sympathetic male characters with whom Frankie developed trust and as a nurse myself I fully understood the black humour of horror in surgery and death (although I have never been in war situation) Readers will need to be prepared for the blood and gore and the author has done wide research on a hospital in such a place. With war in Iraq and Afghanistan still fresh in our own minds we can see how soldiers and those such as medics are daily thrown into this 'theatre' of death and despair.
Overall a great read - interesting and emotional. My only criticism was the affluence of Frankie's parents and lifestyle which allowed her the financial recourse to therapeutically recover. But this is only minor.
Make love not war? Well as this novel shows the reader sometimes that isn't quite so easy.....

Frances McGrath is from a Kennedy -idising, wealthy family with social obligations. Her Irish father hss boughht into the US patriot ideal. When his son volunteers to serve in the Vietnam war no one has a clue about the truth of it but his photo joins the study wall of Heroes.

His.younger sister becomes. McGrath. She'd arrived in Vietnam in Army nurse's regulation uniform but finds blood splattered tee and shorts become her new uniform.

Her family understands dead heroes but is ashamed of living victims at a time when the country turns from patriotic ignorance to shunning reminders of the atrocities the US committed.

Frankie finds she can't cope with grieving without the drink she has used as a prop. Her girlfriends support her but cannot put her back together - despite a few attempys that seem to have succeeded.

For a reader aware of draft- burning rebels then much later damaged vets who achieve notoriety by gun massacres this book fills the gaps. I knew of the disgraced president but not that the country as a whole had abandoned the troops that returned whilst even US prisoners of war were left behind.

This story seems very real. Every time Frankie seems to have a chance of happiness her luck runs out. Counting the days to her boyfriend's end of time in Vietnam has a very predictable outcome. The final scenes are a little neat but as a whole it's a grippiing, whirlwind of a book and one I hated to have to leave off.

I read this novel with an open mind because Kristin Hannah, a highly esteemed author, is new to me. She can certainly relate a moving, captivating story with pace, and maintain a reader’s interest. This novel is also well researched.

However, the meticulous attention to detail is a little heavy handed at times when describing outfits and hairstyles, but the gritty and gruelling depictions of war are convincing and very much ring true.

I found the first part, where naive, impetuous Frankie McGrath decides to follow her brother Finley to Vietnam and serves two tours there, making lifelong friends with Barb and Ethel, far more compelling than the second half of the book.

On her return to laidback Coronado Island, Frankie attempts to fit into a society that’s generally hostile and guarded about the war in Vietnam, and convinced that women were unlikely to have served there. She’s lost, driftless, without a clear purpose, and PTSD sends her down dark alleyways.

All very relatable and understandable. Where the narrative disappoints is in giving Frankie such tremendous man-appeal that her romances seem implausible. Was she really so irresistible that every man in sight wants a relationship with her?

I’d have liked greater emphasis on the women in general and more of their individual stories being told, rather than a narrow focus on Frankie, the one character I didn’t particularly like, though I sympathised with her plight.

There’s no doubt the author is a talented writer and can tell a great story, and I’m probably in the minority for not loving every aspect of it. Overall, this is an excellent read and I’m grateful to Pan MacMillan and NetGalley for the eARC.

Absolutely beautiful storytelling. The life of Frankie has you in a chokehold and you won’t want to let go. Kristin never disappoints and I eagerly await her next book already.