Book Review: The Women, by Hannah Kristin (2024)

 I just read Hannah Kristin's novel The Women. It is the story of a young nurse, less than a year out of nursing school, who enlists in the Army during the Vietnam War and spends two years working in evacuation hospitals in combat zones. The book is intended to illustrate the experiences of nurses during the war. It is a page-turner, and the author does an excellent job of showing the inner life of nurse Frances McGrath. 

PTSD afflicted nurses at the same rate as the male veterans.  Ten thousand women served in the military in Vietnam, and most were nurses. Their average was 23, and the average age of the soldiers they treated was 19.  Every day, six days a week, in-country, they worked 12-hour shifts, treating young American men whose limbs had been blown off, whose intestines were hanging out, or otherwise maimed horribly.  As if that were not enough, the Vietcong regularly attacked the hospitals and nurses' living quarters with rockets and mortar rounds.  

  

The public treated returning nurses the same way they treated returning soldiers.  They were not respected. No one wanted to know what they did, saw, or heard.  They were told to forget about it (as were the men). Parents assumed their daughters were the same naive and innocent persons who had left and expected them to resume their lives as if they had never been in the war. Most doctors, as well as the public, had never heard of PTSD.  Some civilians refused to believe that women served in the war.  And once people became aware of veterans with PTSD, because they served in hospitals and were not deployed in direct combat, many refused to believe that nurses could have PTSD.

For developing nursing skills, the quality of experience in a field hospital cannot be matched elsewhere. Nurses routinely performed many things only doctors did in the U.S.A. (e.g., tracheotomies and suturing patients after abdominal surgeries).  When they left the military, they were confident they could handle anything in the civilian world.

The book's historical and social background is accurate. It covers Frankie’s time in Vietnam and return to the U.S.A., which is equally important to understand.  I appreciated being reminded of the anti-war and civil rights movements and the other fashions, trends, and social changes from the 1960s.

The author did extensive background research before writing the book. Her purpose was to present the experiences of nurses in the war. She included examples of every kind of thing that happened to veterans during the period, but how many veterans experienced all of these things?  After Frankie returns to the U.S.A., some events are suspenseful and entertaining but excessive and overly dramatic. But overall, the book is a damn good read.