The Women, by Kristin Hannah, is an interesting, deeply moving, and accurate portrayal of an Army nurse stationed in Vietnam at an Evac Hospital surrounded by a sea of combat.  The protagonist, Francis “Frankie” McGrath, is a young, sheltered woman from San Diego, who joins the war effort in an attempt to emulate her brother, who is drafted into the Vietnam War, but is soon killed in action.  Frankie grows up in a conservative, country-club household, where her father keeps a “wall of honor” in his den to honor family members, going back generations, who served in the military.  When Frankie returns home from the war, a seasoned combat nurse with skills far beyond domestic training, she is shocked and dismayed to find that no recognition of her service is forthcoming from her parents; her picture is not hanging on the wall of honor.  Far from it, fellow country-club members have been told she had been studying abroad in Florence, instead of serving her country in Vietnam.  Not only have her parents failed to recognize her heroic efforts in the war, Frankie finds she has also been disaffected by an American society in turmoil.  She is spat on and disrespected when in uniform and called a “baby killer” and “murderer,” not only by hippies and radicals but by main-stream Americans, who were never convinced of the justification of the war and its growing unpopularity.  For the first time in American history, there are no heroes’ parades for this group of returning war veterans and there is no one who can relate to their war experiences and nowhere to go to relieve their mental stress.  Furthermore, even male veterans are not recognizing her service, as according to them, “There were no women in Vietnam,” to which Frankie always retorts, “If you did not see me, you were one of the lucky ones.”

Like the combatants themselves, Frankie is haunted by the tragic experiences she encounters in Vietnam, and by the tragic loves that come and go as an impressionable young nurse, but she is followed home by a deeper burden, the dark shadow of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which she cannot outrun and which is poorly recognized by the medical community. 

According to Vietnam era Army trauma surgeon Gus Kappler, who I previously interviewed and whose life story is presented in the Through the Looking Glass section of GrandRoundsMD.com, this is as accurate a story as he has seen of what it was like to be stationed at an Evac Hospital during the Vietnam War.  I highly recommend this fictionalized book.  You will not be disappointed.