The Women by Kristin Hannah

NOTE FROM LOFT BESTIE KAYTLYNNE:

Truthfully, this was my very first Historical Fiction and I wasn't sure it was up my alley.. little did I know this book would take me up the alley, through the street, across the highway and land on hard concrete. The emotional roller coaster is equivalent to what I would imagine Six Flags is and I have never found a story so beautiful and captivating. The trials and tribulations, knowing that this was America once upon a time, I urge EVERYONE to read this book and learn to love Frankie as much as I do.

"From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women―at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets―and becomes one of―the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam."