This is one of the most powerful and affecting books I have ever read.
The story starts in 1965, when Frankie McGrath is a 20-year-old nursing student. When her brother ships out to Vietnam she joins the Army Nursing corp – she wants to serve just like her brother, Finley, and be a hero.
As a nurse in Vietnam, Frankie finds her calling. She’s a really good combat nurse and she is saving lives every day. The vivid scenes in the operating room (OR) are intense. The author takes you right into the action with Frankie as she performs an emergency tracheotomy during a mortar attack or soars above the jungle in a helicopter under enemy fire, or dances in the officer’s club to music by The Doors and The Beatles. Frankie goes through a lot in Vietnam, but it’s when she returns home that things really go downhill.
Frankie has PTSD, but there is no help available for her, because as a nurse the army doesn’t consider her to be a veteran. In spite of her traumatic experiences, she didn’t ‘see combat’. As her life unravels, she is told by everyone, including army doctors, that ‘there were no women in Vietnam’.
Kristin Hannah certainly puts her main character through the ringer, but it’s a powerful story because the experiences of women in Vietnam have been largely overlooked in the pop culture narrative.
As an Australian, the only downside of this book is that you wouldn’t know Australia and New Zealand there too. It’s very US centric and there is little sense of the impact of the war outside the US. That said, I still think it’s worth a read, precisely because it is part of our history too.
Hot tip: have a box of tissues handy at the end.
Five (sniffly) stars from me.
-Katrina Roe, RRL
