Author: Kristin Hannah
One of the best books I’ve ever read. Kristin Hannah is the author of many other really good books, (The Nightingale, The Great Alone) but this is a masterpiece.
The book follows the journey of a woman who went to Vietnam to serve as a nurse. It is a graphic account of what is was like to be in the thick of the fighting, but also a haltingly disturbing portrait of how our soldiers (both men and women) were treated by the country who sent them there. It is also a love story and a portrait of how human connection and shared experience help us to survive.
Many of us were either not alive or too young to remember the Vietnam War. That’s why it’s such an important book. I am acutely aware of how uninformed I am about much of American history. I don’t think my school taught me anything that stuck other than Egyptian history. Reading well-researched, historically accurate books that teach us history from the human perspective is a far better lesson than anything we learned in the classroom.
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