Frankie McGrath signs up as a nurse and goes to Vietnam, and the book splits cleanly in half. The war is the first part. Coming home is the second, and the second is the harder one.
The argument underneath is about erasure. Women served in that war in large numbers and were told afterward, repeatedly and officially, that they had not. There were no women in Vietnam is a line the book returns to.
The hospital scenes are excellent and the romantic plotting is less so. I would have taken more of the ward and less of the triangle.
Read January 2025.
