The Women by Kristin Hannah

This is historical fiction, a made up story that uses the underlying structure of what happened to women who enlisted as nurses in Vietnam and served in combat theaters there. I am not a combat veteran, but I have provided mental health care to men and women who fit that bill for every major U.S. military operation since WWI, and this book ticks all the boxes of what that experience is to live through. Frances "Frankie" McGrath grew up in white Southern California privilege of the 1950's. Her father idolizes the men in her family that went to war, and her brother is a Naval Academy graduate who is headed to Vietnam. Women in Frankie's family do lunch--they make a difference in their homes, not the world. So when she impulsively joins the Army upon leaving nursing school without consulting a soul, she surprises everyone, including herself. Most shocking to her is that it is an embarrassment to her parents--they literally tell their friends that she is studying abroad. The rest of the first half of the book reflects all the things we know about combat experiences and the war in general in Vietnam--the manipulated message about the danger of communism in the region, the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, the under resourced military hospitals and the overwhelming casualties they routinely handled, the reality on the ground and the distorted story being told at home, the poor training of troops and the lack of cohesion among them, and the persisting in a losing war to save face politically at home. It is all there. Then there is the home coming. The second half of the book is about combat veterans coming home when it doesn't go at all well. Frankie's family is ashamed of her, the VA turns her away because women didn't serve in Vietnam, and it is up to her fellow combat nurses to get her back on her feet. I found this part of the story very emotional and evocative of the stories patients have told me. I do get very wrapped up in a novel when I read it, but I rarely cry. I cried at several junctures in the back half of this book, she nailed it so perfectly. I would recommend this book to everyone. I recently read Stanley Karnow's telling of the Vietnam War, which is factually correct but emotionally void--while fiction, this puts you near the action, and leaves you with a sense of what it might have been like to go through it.