January 2025: The Women by Kristin Hannah – VIETNAM (and California)

5th January 2025

The Women by Kristin Hannah, a novel of the American War in Vietnam.

Author Kristin Hannah is invariably a good bet for a riveting story and a good sense of place!

In this novel she tackles the thorny issue of the “Vietnam War” and sets her female characters centre stage. Frankie’s family is wealthy and hails from Coronado Island, where people celebrate courage and commitment to their country. Her brother signs up to serve in the war and is lauded for choosing the ‘right’ path, but his time in Vietnam is short lived and the family is informed of his death. By this point Frankie has already signed up for a tour of duty “in-country” much to her parents’ chagrin – the war in Vietnam is no place for a young woman.

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However, her determination wins through and she puts her short training as a nurse to incredibly good use. But the conditions are appalling and the medical teams are under-staffed and over-stretched, and the things she has to witness are beyond endurance. She does, however, feel she is making a difference and a love affair under her belt underlines that this is very much the life for her – despite the trauma. There is a real and perpetual sense of the urgency, as mutilated patients are brought in by chopper for emergency care day in, day out.

“There is no winning in war. Not this war, anyway. There was just pain and death and destruction; good men coming home either broken beyond repair or in body bags, and bombs dropping on civilians, and a generation of children being orphaned.”

Once she returns to America, she is taken aback at the furore that has been brewing around the war. It becomes increasingly clear that American intervention in Vietnam is counter productive and they are losing troops and any notion of victory disappeared long ago. Once Frankie is back in the States, she and the veterans face unanticipated opprobrium, as the mood changes and the case against the war builds

The author creatively and realistically conjures up the theatre of war from the American perspective, through Frankie’s eyes and then follows her story as she lands back home, suffering, in all likelihood, from PTSD (PTSD wasn’t readily recognised at that point in time).

The novel is clearly well researched and credibly conjures up the era, set against the political backdrop of the time and feeding in well-known music anthems, which add to the colour of the period. The story informs and lays out the trajectory of the war and explores the shattering aftermath.

Interestingly, the women recruits were few and far between and never received acknowledgement until later for their amazing and stalwart contribution to the war effort. Many men just couldn’t accept that any women at all had been working in Vietnam, in any capacity. Frankie, for example, seeks psychological group therapy but is not invited to join the largely male group because her presence would inhibit the men sharing they own individual experiences. And so many people doubted that women even served at all in Vietnam.

An excellent novel that raises hitherto little known issues and treats the whole subject with sensitivity and clarity. A top read!