The Women by Kristen Hannah
Historical fiction writer, Kristen Hannah, highlights the untold story of female nurses serving in Vietnam and dives deep into the impact of PTSD on grief.
Written by Jade Adgate
“How did you get through grief, how did you want to live again when you couldn't imagine what that life could be, how you could be happy again? It was a question that hadn't occurred to her before.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Women
Kristen Hannah is renowned for her historical fiction. From the sweeping Alaskan survival saga (The Great Alone) to her WWII bestseller, The Nightingale, Hannah absorbs readers into the complexities of the past while asking questions of the world we occupy today. Her newest work, The Women, is a dive into the female nurses who served the American military through Vietnam: the naive longing that landed them in the violent jungles, the intense trauma, the confusing political landscape that labeled them pariahs upon their return home, and the jagged road to healing the grief collected in their service.
There are things I found lacking: Hannah leans heavily on trauma to move the plot along and the storyline was predictable, particularly if you’ve read her previous books. But what she gets precisely right outweighs these slights. Hannah encapsulates the unique weight of grief, the hollow yet heavy feel of being immersed in traumatic death, and the oppressive fight to survive your own experience of being overwhelmed by both. This is a book about grief and loss that asks questions we have yet to answer as a species: how do we move forward with joy after living through the darkest parts of our shared humanity?
Her answer is simple: the women. The heroes of this book are the women who were dismissed and denied recognition after their service. The women who banded together to save their soldiers and to save each other formed bonds that were and still are the path to integrating the grief and loss into something that wisens and deepens us, instead of destroys us.
If you are looking for a deep study into the complexities of Vietnam and the women who served among our soldiers, or an investigation into the weight and ways of grieving catastrophic loss and PTSD, this book is for you. Surprisingly, its story will fill your heart with something that we often find alongside grief, hope. Especially as you consider how you too have been saved, stitched together, and supported by the women in your life.
U.S. Army nurses at the 93rd Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh, near Saigon, in 1968, work to stabilize a patient. Nurses in Vietnam often faced not only intense demands for patient care but also the threat of attacks on close-by military facilities and even the hospitals themselves. (B.J. Greenway Rasmussen Collection, Military Women’s Memorial), historynet.com.
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