I enjoy stories that highlight the important roles women played in history, when they have so frequently been relegated to the shadows. 

Thank God for girlfriends. In this crazy, chaotic, divided world that was run by men, you could count on the women.

Anyone who grew up in the 70s and 80s would remember the controversial Vietnam war, intended to contain the spread of communism. In The Women, Kristin Hannah tells a story about the Vietnam war through a women’s gaze, that of military nurses who worked on bases and in field hospitals under fire.

The women had a story to tell, even if the world wasn’t quite yet ready to hear it, and their story began with three simple words. We were there.

In 1966, Frances’s (or Frankie as she becomes known) brother leaves for the Vietnam war. Frankie’s pre-planned debutante life is set to change irrevocably when she decides to enlist as an Army nurse after her brother’s friend tells her ‘Women can be heroes.’

From here, the war was almost beautiful. Maybe that was a fundamental truth: War looked one way for those who saw it from a safe distance. Close up, the view was different

Frankie lands in Vietnam with inadequate training. It’s a ‘learn or die’ situation where she is tutored by seasoned nurses and doctors to patch up men and civilians maimed by military weapons and napalm. Soon she will be able to work during a blackout with bombs dropping around her and a flashlight gripped between her teeth while she staunches a gut wound.

Damn it, McGrath! We don’t have time for fear. You’re good enough. Do it!

While she is away public sentiment turns against America’s involvement in the war, and when Frankie returns, it is not to a hero’s welcome but to shame, protests, nightmares and a family who refuse to acknowledge what she has been doing.

We laugh so we don’t cry.

Reading The Women is a visceral experience. From the chaos and gut wrenching losses of the combat zone to the aftermath and returning home and PTSD. Hannah’s research is impeccable and she keeps the reader absorbed through action and plot twists, recasting the Vietnam war narrative. The Women is not a book for the queasy or faint hearted, but is a captivating, heart wrenching, moving and important fictional contribution to the historical narrative of the Vietnam war.