The Women by Kristin Hannah

I liked Hannah's "The Nightingale" and "The Great Alone." Both were terrific character studies. Based on the marketing copy for this book, I was hoping for the same, but I couldn't get past the brutality of war, which was so graphic in parts that I found myself skimming.

Sheltered Frankie McGrath follows her family's tradition of serving their country during wartime. She intends to use her nursing degree by volunteering for a tour in Vietnam in 1965. However, she encounters a challenge she doesn't know if she can meet in the front-line trenches of a hospital dealing with extreme casualties. With the support of her fellow nurses and sympathetic doctors, Frankie rises above her self-doubts to become a first-rate surgical nurse.

Robert Dugoni's amazing "The World Played Chess," set mostly in Vietnam, made me think I could tackle another Vietnam-era book. I was wrong. While Dugoni's book did contain graphic war scenes, the characters were more realistic and I cared more for them than the characters depicted in this book. I'm not a fan of books set during wartime; I thought the overarching story in "The Women" would carry me through, however, but it did not. I liked Frankie and the graphic scenes were not extraneous, but I couldn't stomach it. I DNF at 50%. 

3/5 stars.  

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