This is Linda Allen for HPPR Radio Readers recommending a summer book you won’t regret adding to your stack.
Kristin Hannah is a popular author whose novels include “The Four Winds” and “The Nightingale.” As she explains in her author’s note, her recent release “The Women” is a book she had been wanting to write for many years. She states that she felt the serious subject required that she be considered a capable, experienced writer able to address the weighty material appropriately. She acknowledges the nurses who shared their personal stories.
“The Women” is not a feel-good beach read. It IS an important story of Army nurses who served in Vietnam and the aftermath of their experience. Told from the perspective of one who served two tours spanning two years in the thick of the conflict, “The Women” is a powerful page turner that will keep you riveted. I read the entire book in one very long day of travel. Frankie McGrath is a privileged high schooler in southern California when the war begins to escalate and her free spirited, popular older brother enlists along with his best friend. Frankie has no clear ideas as she finishes Catholic high school and contemplates her future. She decides to study nursing and finds that she’s capable and adept. She soon makes the somewhat hasty decision to serve in the military as an Army nurse. Her wealthy, social parents are horrified.
The narrative is non-stop from the time Frankie arrives “in country” and is quickly baptized by fire. In the midst of the chaos the nurses prove their mettle and hone skills they didn’t know they had over and over again. It’s impossible to overstate their contribution. Relationships take on new levels of meaning as the nurses and doctors work in tandem to save lives and let others go under conditions more stressful and traumatic than most of us can imagine. Frankie makes friends for life who she will call upon during her most challenging periods once she returns stateside and attempts to resume the life her parents had expected her to live.
In seeking help Frankie is told “but women weren’t in combat” at every turn as the nurses' contributions are downplayed and discounted. Her trauma remains a wound she must integrate and strive to accept. Her struggles are laid bare and readers are led to empathize and root for her recovery as the years pass.
The Vietnam war ended in 1975, making this book very timely as the 50-year anniversary approaches. I was in high school then and remember my father watching the nightly news and cursing the politicians who led us into the morass he felt was needless. He’d received three Purple Hearts as a Marine in Korea and seen the carnage of such an action. I was relieved when the controversial war ended and thankful that my friends and contemporaries wouldn’t be going.
Fifty years later it’s imperative that we remember the horrors of all wars and honor those who serve, both past and present, including “The Women.”
I’m Linda Allen in Amarillo for HPPR radio readers recommending a summer book to remember.
I’m Lina Allen, transplanted from eastern Oregon to the Texas Panhandle. I’m a devoted dachshund mom, a retired psychotherapist and an Advanced Teacher of Therapeutic Yoga. Between dog walks and hikes at Palo Duro Canyon I enjoy reading, traveling and volunteering.
