"The Women": Author, Vietnam nurse describe book's effect

More than 50 years since most Vietnam War combat nurses came home to restart their lives in relative obscurity, a new and long-awaited appreciation for their military service is on the rise. That’s what 20 straight weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List will do for an under-told and misunderstood story.

Kristin Hannah, author of the 2024 historical novel “The Women” about combat nurses of the Vietnam War, joined Diane Carlson Evans, whose 2020 autobiography “Healing Wounds” recounts her time in theater and struggles that followed, to speak before a sold-out Helena, Mont., Civic Center Auditorium audience of about 1,200 Wednesday evening.

“I have written a lot of books,” Hannah told attendees, many of whom were cradling hardcover copies of “The Women” and “Healing Wounds.” “I have been doing this a long time, and I have never seen anything like this. Yes, I think it’s the book, but mostly, I think it’s the time … we were ready to hear this story and embrace this story. I think the vets have been waiting a long time to have this conversation.”

“The Women,” which debuted last February, has already sold more than 2 million copies and is on pace to match or exceed “The Nightingale,” Hannah’s 2015 historical novel about two women resisting Nazi occupation in World War II – which has been reprinted in 45 different languages, selling more than 4.5 million copies.

“It’s just so surreal to me, still, that this has become so popular,” said Carlson Evans, who received The American Legion’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2021 for her work to raise awareness – emphatically through a decade-long effort to install the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C. In May, The American Legion National Executive Committee passed a resolution supporting nomination for Carlson Evans to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

When she and her fellow women veterans of the war came home, like their brothers who fought, “we were unheralded. We were unwanted. We were unwelcomed, and we were painted as crazy veterans who lost the war. During the 10 years I fought for the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, I was labeled a femi-Nazi, a radical feminist using the Vietnam dead to further my cause, threatened with unmentionable names and told that women didn’t deserve a memorial on the National Mall, and a whole lot more backlash … about us women who had served our nation and saved lives, to be with our brothers in arms.

“Now, we are heroines. We are heralded, we’re coveted, we’re welcomed… I feel like this audience really cares about us, us women who served, and (Hannah’s) book has brought this to the surface to millions.”

Hannah has written more than 30 top-selling books, four of which have been optioned into movies, including “The Women,” and one of which became a Netflix original series in 2021. She said the idea for her 2024 release resurfaced after years wanting to do a historical novel about the war in Southeast Asia. The COVID-19 pandemic and the heroic work of nurses during that time was the impetus to finally tackle the topic from the nurses’ perspective. And, she explained, the reading public was ready to learn.

“I think we are aware that a fundamental and tragic mistake was made,” Hannah said. “It’s interesting that there are so many young people reading this book that know nothing about this. It’s not taught in school anywhere – Vietnam in general and women in particular.”

“The Women” follows the journey of a young nurse who defied her father’s wishes and went to war at a time when the public believed that only men were, or should be, in Vietnam and that those women who went were not actually in combat. Many, like the lead character in her book and Carlson Evans, came home to confront a dismissive public, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder from their continuous exposure to the deadly ravages of warfare, treating wounds, listening to the last words of dying troops and going back to work saving lives, while taking fire themselves.

“Women were constantly told, ‘You didn’t carry a gun,’” Hannah explained. “‘You shouldn’t have PTSD. You weren’t in combat. You volunteered.’ … Whatever the sentence was to sort of denigrate the trauma that you came home with. It was important to me that the reader understood that this is combat. That was really important to me.

“This is the story of women throughout history, that our contributions are not recognized. They are not examined … One of the things that is so great about this era now is we are in a time when forgotten and marginalized stories are being celebrated, are being looked for, are being talked about. It’s really great that women are a part of that, and stories like yours are being told.”

Several former Vietnam combat nurses and hundreds of veterans were in the crowd, breaking up the onstage discussion between Hannah and Carlson Evans, with cheers of appreciation.

As she was working on the historical novel, Hannah said she “stalked” Carlson Evans until they finally made contact. The Helena American Legion Post 2 member assisted the author with many details and nuances in her research, and her husband, retired VA surgeon Mike Evans, helped make the book accurate from a medical perspective. Carlson Evans also helped Hannah find others who were in theater to review her work.

Their collaboration led Hannah and her husband Ben to attend the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington last November. There, the author saw dozens of women from all eras step to a podium and share their experiences.

“Storytelling is at the core of all human connection,” Hannah told Wednesday’s crowd. “I think that is part of what ‘The Women’ brings to this.”

The author said she was moved by the power of the memorial to inspire women, who may previously have been quiet about their wartime experiences, to let their voices be heard.

“To see this sea of women Vietnam vets around their memorial and to talk to their children and their husbands – and to see them telling their stories publicly, some of them I think for the first time … I am just so proud that this book is a part of your amazing message of remembrance and gratitude. It’s amazing.”