The Women
They served in Vietnam and came home to nothing. Hannah spent years on this to give them the recognition they were never given.
Frankie's War
Kristin Hannah's 2024 novel follows Frances Frankie McGrath, a young woman from a military family in California who enlists as an army nurse in Vietnam in 1965 after her brother deploys. She serves three tours in conditions she was not prepared for and returns to an America that does not want to acknowledge that women served, that does not understand what they saw, and that offers no resources for what they carry. The novel traces the long aftermath: the PTSD, the isolation, and the slow struggle toward recognition and healing. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
Reading The Women
Reckoning
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Part
"War is not only a man's story.
"Kristin Hannah
Hannah spent three years researching the novel, interviewing Vietnam-era female veterans and reading hundreds of accounts. She discovered that the contribution of women who served had been systematically omitted from the historical record.
The novel is dedicated to the 265,000 women who served during the Vietnam War era. At the time of publication less than 10 percent of Americans knew women had served in Vietnam at all.