America has always portrayed itself as a country of advanced thinking, but the truth under its boasting is that , for the most part, if women were a reason to be proud, America ignored them. Hannah reveals this "critical gender theory" in her book about a nurse serving in Vietnam. Her main character is Frankie McGrath , a young woman who becomes an Army nurse in Vietnam. She believes she should serve her country in some way after her brother is killed in the war shortly after he enlists. She is hoping her mother and most importantly, her father will be proud of her. She gets the exact opposite reaction. They expected her to get married and have children. Her father has a "hero's wall" of family members who served in past wars. She can only be on that wall after she gets married, and the picture is her wedding picture, and it will be the only picture of her. The wall is symbolic of what society deemed was heroic and only men could be heroic in that way. There was only room for a woman if she married, became a housewife, and had children. While this choice is perfectly acceptable, it should not be perfectly binding as the only way for a woman to show her worth. Frankie is sure she belongs on that wall as a nurse who serves in the Army. Her parents disagree and tell their friends , when Frankie goes off to the war, thst she is studying abroad. But it isn't just her family whose narrow vision of Frankie affects her life. The Army itself has allowed societal rules to dictate how women are treated. Getting to Vietnam is no picnic for Frankie. While her fellow travelers are all men dressed in comfortable fatigues, she must travel in her blouse, tight green jacket, narrow, skirt, nylons held up by a regulation girdle (despite panty hose being available) , and heels. The life of a nurse in a war zone is dangerous, frightening, and traumatic. The war makes less and less sense to Frankie as she stuffs vital organs back into shredded chests and abdominal cavities, and helps doctors amputate more than one limb per patient. Frankie comes to realize with growing horror what is really going on in Vietnam, that America was losing that war, but didn't mind sacrificing more and more young men so that the government could save face. It is a rude awakening for her. When she returns home after two tours of duty, she is treated with disrespect by the public, the VA, and her parents. The country had been told that no women went to Vietnam, so Frankie could not have been there even though she so obviously was. That has always been the problem with woman who don't follow the rules society dictates. If they insist on showing how wrong headed that thinking is, society will just have to minimize them if not ignore them. Suffering from what is now recognized as PTSD, Frankie hits rock bottom before she is able, with the help of her nurse friends who also served, to find a way to survive. The Vietnam protests by the veterans themselves as well as everyone else who raised their voices, finally ended the war. Eventually, the government admitted that over 6,000 nurses,most of them women, served in Vietnam. Hannah's story is thoroughly researched. Her depiction of war torn Vietnam is riveting. One turns the pages to end the war as soon as possible. Frankie's struggles with the war and at home are realistic, heartbreaking, and deeply troubling, but they don't destroy her. She survived Vietnam, and she survives coming back home.

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The Women: A Novel