The Women

In 1966, twenty-year-old Frances “Frankie” McGrath grows up in a wealthy, traditional Catholic family on Coronado Island, California. Her older brother Finley is leaving for Vietnam, and her father, Connor, proudly keeps photographs of male relatives who served in the military on a family heroes' wall. At Finley's farewell, his friend Joseph Ryerson “Rye” Walsh suggests that women can be heroes too. Inspired by this idea and by a wounded veteran who describes a nurse's care, Frankie accelerates her nursing education and joins the Army Nurse Corps. Her parents, Connor and Bette, oppose her decision, convinced military service belongs to men. Before she can reconcile with them, naval officers announce Finley's death after a helicopter shootdown, with no remains recovered. Frankie continues with her enlistment despite her mother's pleas.

Arriving in Vietnam in March 1967, Frankie is assigned to the Thirty-Sixth Evacuation Hospital after a frightening journey from Saigon. Initially sheltered and inexperienced, she is overwhelmed by mass-casualty emergencies, injuries among young American soldiers and violence affecting Vietnamese civilians. Experienced Army nurses Ethel Flint and Barb Johnson become her mentors and lifelong friends. Major Goldstein, Captain Ted Smith and surgeon Jamie Callahan help her acquire the expertise needed to care for critical patients, first on the neuro ward and then in the operating room. On medical visits she helps treat a Vietnamese girl with a gangrenous hand and later comforts Mai, a traumatized child burned when her village was bombed. She gradually questions official claims about progress in the war. Jamie and Frankie develop romantic feelings, but she resists an affair after learning that he is married to Sarah and has a son. Soon after Ethel leaves Vietnam, Jamie is gravely injured when his helicopter is shot down. Frankie watches resuscitation attempts stop during his evacuation and believes him dead without receiving confirmation.

Frankie transfers with Barb to the Seventy-First Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku, where rocket attacks, heavy casualties and uncertain military reports further erode her idealism. At a party she encounters Rye, now a Navy helicopter pilot and commander, and eventually falls in love with him. He is said to be engaged, but on leave in Kauai he assures her that he is no longer engaged. Unbeknownst to Frankie, he actually married Melissa before his first deployment and concealed his wife and their daughter from those around him. During the Tet Offensive Frankie treats the dying young soldier Albert Brown, re-enlists for a second year, and witnesses increasingly severe physical and psychological consequences of the war. She nurses civilians burned by napalm, loses an infant patient, and exchanges letters with Barb after Barb's brother Will is killed by police. She and Rye imagine a life together, but she returns to the United States in March 1969 before his anticipated departure. Soon afterward she learns that he too has been reported killed after a helicopter shootdown.

Frankie's homecoming is marked by hostility and exclusion. Protesters insult and spit at her; Connor has told acquaintances she spent the war years studying in Florence and refuses to display her photograph on his heroes' wall. A civilian hospital discounts her combat nursing experience, later dismissing her after she performs an emergency tracheotomy to save a wounded patient without physician authorization. She suffers nightmares, flashbacks, grief and anger, but a Veterans Administration physician rejects her need for treatment, insisting that women were not in Vietnam and that nurses did not experience combat. Barb and Ethel bring her to Ethel's family farm in Virginia. There she finds some stability, continues nursing, and participates in demonstrations by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. At protests and meetings she learns about efforts to secure the return of prisoners of war and missing service members, and she meets the widowed psychiatrist Henry Acevedo.

When Frankie's mother suffers a stroke in 1971, Frankie returns to Coronado to care for her. Bette's recovery gradually draws mother and daughter closer, and Frankie moves into a bungalow her parents have prepared for her. She volunteers for the National League of Families, writing letters and advocating for prisoners of war, while Henry becomes a companion and romantic partner. Although he treats her well, she cannot fully relinquish her love for Rye. In late 1972 Frankie becomes pregnant despite taking birth control pills. She accepts Henry's marriage proposal, hoping to build the family she has long wanted. Her parents welcome the engagement, and she and Henry prepare a nursery. Yet Connor still regards marriage and motherhood, not wartime nursing, as the proper achievements of a woman; he offers to display her wedding photograph rather than recognize her military service.

In February 1973, Frankie sees Rye among prisoners released from captivity during Operation Homecoming and rushes to the San Diego airfield with Barb and Ethel. Instead of being reunited with a free man, she watches him embrace his wife Melissa and daughter Josephine, called Joey. A newspaper confirms that Rye was married before he first deployed and therefore was married throughout their relationship in Vietnam. Frankie initially resolves to go ahead with her wedding for the sake of the baby, but she miscarries a son she hoped to name Finley. Bette reveals that she too lost a child, a daughter named Celine, and offers both consolation and pills to induce sleep and wakefulness. Frankie cancels her marriage to Henry because she still loves Rye. Her traumatic memories and grief worsen, and she becomes dependent on sedatives and stimulants.

Rye reappears and explains that his helicopter crashed in 1969, leaving him badly injured and imprisoned for more than four years. He says he hid his marriage because he had meant to leave Melissa and still loves Frankie. Frankie, suspended from her nursing work after freezing during an operation and missing a shift, begins a secret affair with him. Rye proposes after she demands that the deception end, but he has not divorced his wife. When Frankie discovers Melissa has just given birth to Rye's son, she realizes he has again deceived her. She takes Valium, drinks heavily, drives recklessly and crashes while narrowly missing a cyclist. Charged with driving under the influence, she tries to obtain help at a veterans' group but is rejected yet again because she is a woman. Overmedicated and disoriented, she imagines Finley calling her into the ocean, where she almost drowns; Connor rescues her. Her intentions remain uncertain, but her family fears a suicide attempt.

Frankie enters inpatient treatment for substance dependence and wartime psychological trauma. Henry, who runs the treatment center but does not serve as her therapist, connects her with Dr. Alden. They help her recognize that the nightmares, flashbacks, shame and emotional volatility began with her military experiences long before Rye's betrayals. Frankie learns to describe her surgical work, the losses she witnessed and her own vulnerability. Barb admits that she too has nightmares, helping Frankie understand that her experiences are not unique or shameful. In 1974, after extending treatment and beginning a sustained recovery through counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous, Frankie decides to leave Coronado. With Barb she searches for somewhere she can rebuild her life and chooses a remote twenty-seven-acre property near Missoula, Montana.

By September 1982, Frankie has regained her nursing license, returned to clinical work, studied psychology, and built the Last Best Place Ranch with Donna, another Vietnam nurse. The property has become a refuge where women veterans can speak about trauma, seek sobriety and support each other. A wall of photographs recognizes the women who served, restoring the acknowledgment that Connor's heroes' wall withheld. Frankie remains concerned about long-term wartime exposures and believes Agent Orange may have contributed to her miscarriage, although the novel does not independently establish its cause. Invited to the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, she debates the value of returning but chooses to march with Barb and Ethel in uniform. At the Wall she sees the names of the fallen, including Finley and eight women nurses. Connor and Bette unexpectedly join her; standing before Finley's name, Connor finally apologizes for dismissing his daughter's wartime service and acknowledges her courage.

The novel's final revelation comes when Frankie encounters Jamie Callahan at the memorial. He survived the evacuation during which she believed him dead, though he bears major injuries and uses a prosthetic leg. Jamie produces the small gray stone Frankie once gave him with a message urging him to fight; he credits remembering her with helping him endure recovery. He also reveals he is divorced and has a daughter named Frances. Their reunion leaves open what may come next between them. Frankie has rebuilt a meaningful life independent of marriage or motherhood and recognizes that remembrance itself matters. She resolves to speak for the overlooked women of Vietnam, their work, their losses and the lives they carried on after the war.