The Women – Kristin Hannah

This latest novel from Hannah (The Nightingale, The Great Alone) is an ambitious combination of a coming-of-age story and America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. It follows Frankie McGrath, who joins the Army Nurse Corps and serves in Vietnam after her brother goes to serve there as well. The descriptions of the chaos the young and sheltered Frankie faces are gripping and realistic, and the difficulties continue when she returns home to a divided country and to the Vietnam vets who don’t consider nurses “vets”. A moving depiction of our ill-fated war (one of many, sadly) and the divisions in America that still exist today.