Bookish Brewing

The Women by Kristin Hannah

Author: Kristin Hannah

Genre: Historical Fiction

Published: 2024 | Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Reviewed by: Rebekka | Bookish Brewing

“Some heroes are never welcomed home, and some wars are never over.”

When I picked up The Women by Kristin Hannah, I expected a powerful war story. What I didn’t expect was a soul-stirring, unforgettable journey into a part of history we have too long ignored, the experience of American women who served in the Vietnam War. This novel did more than tell a story; it pierced through time, memory, and silence. It lingered with me. It changed me.

Kristin Hannah, known for emotionally rich titles like The Nightingale and The Four Winds, delivers what may be her most haunting and important work yet. With The Women, she lifts the veil on a forgotten war within a war, the one faced by female combat nurses who were brave enough to serve, yet erased from history.

A Story That Starts in Sunshine and Ends in Shadows

Set in 1965, the novel begins on Coronado Island, California, a place of wealth, sunshine, and privilege. That is where we meet Frances “Frankie” Grace McGrath, a 20-year-old woman raised in a patriotic, conservative home. Her world is comfortable, controlled, and entirely unaware of the horrors to come.

When Frankie’s brother heads off to Vietnam, her patriotic ideals crack open. Spurred by the line, “Women can be heroes too,” she makes a radical decision: she enlists in the Army Nurse Corps.

And that is where the real story begins.

Suddenly, Frankie is dropped into a world she couldn’t have imagined. The military hospitals of Vietnam are chaotic, gruesome, and relentless. Wounded soldiers flood in by the minute. Blood, screams, and impossible choices become her daily reality. Hannah’s writing doesn’t hold back, but the intensity is raw, vivid, and brutally real.

But war is only half the battle.

The Return Home And the Silence That Followed

When Frankie finally returns to the U.S., the welcome is colder than any battlefield. Unlike male veterans who were at least acknowledged (even if met with protest), Frankie and the women like her are met with silence, denial, and rejection. Her uniform draws sneers, not salutes. Her service is dismissed. Her pain is invisible.

This is where The Women becomes truly unforgettable!

Hannah doesn’t just write about PTSD or the aftermath of war; she makes you feel it. Frankie’s descent into isolation, her struggle with addiction, her search for identity, and her desperate need to be heard — it is all achingly human.

There is a line that struck me so deeply:

“The women had a story to tell, even if the world wasn’t quite yet ready to hear it, and their story began with three simple words. We were there.”

That line stayed with me. It’s the heartbeat of the entire novel.

Friendship, Love, and the Wounds You Don’t See

In Vietnam, Frankie is not alone. She finds fierce, unforgettable friendships in Barb, bold, and Ethel, gentle and grounding. These women become more than friends — they become lifelines. Their bond is what carries them through trauma, chaos, and grief. It is a celebration of female resilience in the most hostile of worlds.

And then there is love, which is unforgettable.

Frankie meets someone in Vietnam, a helicopter pilot named Jamie “Rye” Walsh, who not only notices her but truly sees her for who she is beneath the uniform and the war-hardened exterior. In a place where women like her are overlooked, undervalued, or objectified, Rye treats her with respect, kindness, and an emotional intimacy she has never known. Their connection blossoms gradually amidst the chaos of war, letters passed between missions, quiet moments snatched between emergencies, shared dreams of what life could be after the war. But just when their bond deepens into something real and lasting, Rye is declared missing in action, presumed dead after a tragic incident.

The news shatters Frankie, plunging her into a spiral of unbearable grief, made worse by the silence and lack of closure. She carries this pain with her for years, unable to move on, haunted by what she lost. Yet, what happens much later, when she uncovers a truth she never expected, pulls the story into a whole new realm of heartbreak and suspense, forcing her to confront not just the past but a betrayal that cuts even deeper than war.

A twist comes that shakes everything she thought she knew, and just when you think the story is settling, it unravels again, forcing Frankie to face a truth that will leave you breathless.

Kristin Hannah at Her Finest

Kristin Hannah is a master of emotional storytelling. She crafts historical fiction that is both deeply researched and profoundly personal. Her bestselling novels like The Nightingale, The Four Winds, and Firefly Lane have already earned her a devoted readership, but The Women is something else entirely.

This is not just a war novel. It’s a tribute. A reckoning. A roar for the women who were silenced.

This book is a must-read. It’s gritty, it’s beautiful, and it’s necessary.

I won’t give away the ending, but I’ll say this as the final chapters unfold, everything you thought you understood shifts. And as you close the book, a single question will echo:

“What would I have done?”