The Women is an insta-classic of historical fiction about the Vietnam War and women's rights

I’m rarely attracted to reading books atop the New York Times best-seller list. Oftne they reside there simply because they are insipidly written and therefore read by as many people as can be expected to actually pick up a book and read it.

That said, too many smart people with tastes I respect had recommended Kristin Hannah’s The Women—which did indeed debut and spend eight weeks at #1 on said list—and I’m also a sucker for historical fiction that centers on the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Charles Manson-hippie era.

This is one of those stories that takes you deep into understanding an era’s mindset by focusing on one person for a significant portion of that person’s life. In this case, it’s Frances "Frankie" McGrath, who loses her beloved brother in Vietnam and suddenly commits to head there herself as an Army nurse—a decision that unsurprisingly resets the entire course of her privileged life on Coronado off the coast of San Diego.

The page turner works well for the first half while Frankie is in the war zone and is equally compelling when she returns home to a country and people who are completely indifferent to her, with even friends and family in denial that women were in Vietnam at all. Hannah does a heartbreaking job of detailing how awful the military was treated upon returning from a lost war. She underlines what a disgraceful period this was in U.S. history.

Warner Bros. has predictably acquired the rights for a movie. This book is long, but an easy, quick, and satisfying read. I recommend you get to the book before the movie arrives. It’s a classic addition to the Vietnam canon.

5 out of 5 stars