Hey folks, it’s been a minute!
If you know me, you are likely aware that my day job ramps into seriously high gear once a year, usually somewhere in between when the Oscar nominations are announced and when the winners claim their statues. (I work for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.) It’s a huge, life-swallowing, eleven-day-long endeavor and it’s frequently all I can do to keep my head above water and my child vaguely familiar with my face during the season. Laundry piles up, grocery stores sit unvisited, sleep is un-had. Writing projects languish (hello, Substack!), and books, as you might imagine, go largely unread.
Except, not exactly. I realized recently that I actually do find a way to incorporate books into my Festival life, though not always in the usual form—or volume. One year I decided I should get familiar with this Elin Hilderbrand1 person, and ordered a couple of her backlist titles on Audible, to keep me company whilst barreling around town, to and from events. Their soapy scandals, so easily dropped in and out of, perfectly carried me from screening to tribute to afterparty and back again.
Last year, a friend with whom I frequently swap stacks passed me I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED, the very buzzed-about memoir from child actor Jennette McCurdy. I never watched her show, but, I think one would have to be dead oneself not to be intrigued by that title. And while profoundly sad and disturbing, the memoir was told in a funny, relatable voice and comprised of Goldilocks-sized vignettes; just long enough to let my afterparty-adrenalized body acclimate to bedtime while reading, yet short enough that I could finish one or two every night before my eyelids grew too heavy for continued consciousness.
Then this year, in early February, Kristin Hannah—a juggernaut of historical women’s fiction, if that is indeed a thing—dropped her latest, and I snapped it up with barely a look at the logline. Hannah, known more for long, historical2 works than beach reads or stories that can be consumed in bite-sized pieces, might not be the intuitive choice for my busiest time of year, and yet. There’s just something divine about being so familiar with an author’s work that you implicitly trust you’ll love the book, despite whatever baggage you come to it with, and how that baggage might influence your scan of even the scantest line of jacket copy.
It’s because I loved the horrifying THE GREAT ALONE and the devastating THE FOUR WINDS that I eventually picked up THE NIGHTENGALE, a story of two sisters in Nazi-occupied France, despite the fact that I typically run in the other direction once I come across the words World War II. I knew Hannah’s take would carry me along. That hers would not be a retelling of the familiar WWII stories so much as it would be a story of women who are forced to make harrowing choices due to the circumstances of the war.
Her stories could not take place outside of the historical settings in which they exist, and are loaded with plot. And yet, they are character studies, more than anything else.
THE WOMEN, a coming-of-age drama set during and after the Vietnam War, is quintessential Hannah; she is a queen of personifying the traumas of the past—and of the sadist writing maxim that nothing kicks the tension into high gear like the constant torture of one’s characters. And this installment is no exception. Perfect for those of us who prefer our fiction with a side of emotional devastation. I’m not crying; you’re crying! Okay yes I am also crying.
The story kicks off in 1965 with Frances (Frankie) McGrath at her big brother’s going away party, held at their posh Coronado Island home. Party as sendoff to the Vietnam War. Apparently this tracks with the general sentiment of the day, when America still revered itself as the uncomplicated good guy who saved the day in WWII, and considered the conflict in Vietnam simple. A tour there “cushy.” And Frankie and Finn’s dad is thrilled that his son is going to join the other men on his “hero’s wall.”
So thrilled, Frankie becomes kind of inspired; more so when Finn’s buddy from the Academy says to her in a stolen moment that women can be heroes too.
Finn ships off, sends frequent lighthearted letters home, and our naive, bouffant-haired nursing school student opts to enlist. Her parents, to Frankie’s surprise, are horrified. And then the doorbell rings. The news is as ominous as one might expect.
Things go from bad to worse as we watch Frankie come of age during excruciating, finely-wrought combat scenes, falling in love with the wrong guys while tending to the ruined bodies of men often younger even than her, and cultivating a couple of lifesaving—and lifelong—friendships with two other nurses.
Letters from her mother back home hint at the shifts taking place in the US, but Frankie is still shocked when she returns to find that her service is scorned. Her devastation only compounds the PTSD, and it’s all compounded again, when she seeks help and is told “There were no women in Vietnam.” She suffers and suffers and suffers some more; her heart is broken in every possible way. Because this is Kristin Hannah, we get all the gory details, all the heartbreak, all the bad decisions and all the consequences—but still we keep reading, and rooting for Frankie.
THE WOMEN, like Hannah’s other works, is long, but moves quickly. Each scene is clearly contained, story forward, with loads of sensory detail and interiority to keep us firmly planted in Frankie’s shoes, though it’s really the plot and dialogue that do the heavy lifting.
Hannah came of age during the Vietnam War, and has spoken of how personal this book is for her. I’m younger than her, but I grew up during a time when it felt like that war was everywhere, in a different way. The fighting was over, but art was still deep in the reckoning. Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Born on the Fourth of July were back to back to back blockbusters, and prime time TV (RIP to the monoculture) was dominated by China Beach (omg how I loved that show!) and The Wonder Years. And so, in that way, this book felt familiar.
Familiar and familiarly crushing (always a bonus!). But what else would we expect?
She’s like one of the biggest selling authors ever. At any given time, she’s got at least one book on the NYT bestsellers list.
Dear Reader: the 80s count as historical. Discuss.