Published February 2024

Summary

Frankie McGrath comes from a conservative, wealthy, and religious family. She’s been taught that men should fight in wars and women should take good care of their husbands and children. When someone suggests to her that women can also be heroes, Frankie heads off to be a nurse in Vietnam both to serve her country and make her family proud. The story follows her time in Vietnam, how it changes her, and what she experiences when she returns. 

My Thoughts

 I can’t enthusiastically hop on to the “greatest book of the year” bandwagon, but I think it tells an important story about a war many people have forgotten, and parts of the book are quite good.

Ultimately I felt the author overplayed the number of tragedies.

Frankie has survived a war, she has seen and experienced terrible things, she’s lost people she loves, and she has PTSD. She returns home to a society that doesn’t want to hear about her experiences and won’t take her seriously. She turns to the other females that were with her in Vietnam to get her through it. These elements alone make a solid story.

However, instead of stopping there, the author continued throw more and more tragedy at Frankie in what felt to me like an attempt to manipulate the emotions of the reader rather than an attempt to move the story forward or enhance character development. Frankie’s story could have reached the exact same place it ultimately did without the intervening medical crises and relationship crises. The extra stories made the story longer, but didn’t make it better.

What I Liked 

The story lifts up the work of female American nurses in Vietnam. Nurses never get enough credit, and the nurses, especially the female nurses, who served in Vietnam have been written out of most of the textbooks and documentaries. This alone makes this book worth reading.

There are some strong female main characters, and I love the depiction of female friendships – though I wish we’d been given more backstories on the other women rather than focusing exclusively on Frankie.

Very well-researched. The details of PTSD, the American bases, medical facilities, injuries, and attacks were exceptionally well-written.

There was a frantic pacing to the portions of the story that happened in Vietnam that captured the unforgiving nature of war. The chapters set in Vietnam were the strongest parts of the book. 

What I Liked Less

I didn’t find Hannah’s writing style very engaging. I almost stopped reading before Frankie even arrived in Vietnam. So while I liked most of the story, I didn’t ever really embrace the writing style.

The romances felt forced and unnecessary.

Trigger Warnings

If you have topics that trigger you, they are probably in this book.

This is a partial list:

Addiction

Alcoholism

Burn Injuries

Extreme Violence

Graphic Descriptions of Injuries

Gun Violence

Infidelity

Mental Illness

Misogyny

Pregnancy Loss

PTSD

Racial Violence

Rioting

Suicidal ideation

Torture

War