The Women by Kristin Hannah

It was surprising to me that I was able to get both a hardbound and Kindle copy of The Women so easily. They hype around this book for months was so omnipresent that it seemed unlikely that a copy would be available to read. Among my friends, who have read the novel, there were very diverse reactions. Some loved it and others couldn't finish it. I am probably right in the middle of those reactions. 

The main character, Frances Gracie McGrath, aka Frankie, decides to enlist in the armed forces as a nurse to join her brother, Fin, who was a graduate of the Naval Academy and was sent to Viet Nam. She lived with her parents on Coronado Island, CA where they enjoyed a very comfortable, if not lavish, lifestyle. Her father, a staunch male chauvinist, was quite supportive of his son's service. However, with the mantra, "Women can be heroes, too" stuck in her mind, he vehemently opposed his daughter going off to war. The depiction of what the nurses and all the men serving in-country was heart-wrenching, considering what the reaction back in the States was during their service and upon their home-coming. Frankie is thought of as an excellent nurse who becomes a major part of the surgical teams. The trauma that rockets, napalm, and close calls gives the reader pause as to what conditions were like in the jungle. 

As a major component of the novel, Frankie's romantic life is a roller coaster for sure. She has very strong feelings for Jaimie Callahan, a surgeon, who is severely wounded in an enemy attack. Then she falls head over heels in love with Rye Walsh, a friend of her brother's who was also serving. When Jamie and Rye are reported KIA, she is heartbroken and devastated. She is becomes engaged to Dr. Henry Avevedo, a psychiatrist who is working to help those Vets with PTSD, The relationships are filled with pain, trauma, and betrayal. 

When Frankie returns after her two years of active duty, she must deal with the realization that her service was not respected by those who spat at her in the airport or her parents who firmly believed that she should not have enlisted. Her life spirals into one of PTSD, addiction, and depression. The reader shoulders most of that tragedy with her as Hannah describes it in detail. 

Throughout the novel, there is one constant and that is the strong bond between two other nurses, Barbara and Ethel, who are there for Frankie in every crisis. This friendship was so deep and really the theme that impressed this reader the most. Women friends are the most faithful, dependable, devoted. They picked her up, tried  to give advice, but were nonjudgmental. They were in stark contrast to her parents who were so about show and acceptance with their country club friends.

With all the depicted horrors of war and personal crises, The Women really is not what one would call an enjoyable read, but it was enlightening, as far as the "behind the scenes" in Viet Nam. I empathized with Frankie in her PTSD, but not so much in her romantic choices. In some ways, there was the feeling that Hannah was checking off all the boxes to see how many crises a woman could endure. Unfortunately, Frankie McGrath, suffered them all.  

The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly

Books that span generations are intriguing to me.  The Last Garden in England was just that type of book. The central character in the novel was the garden in Highbury, England. Although fictitious in the story, Highbury is an actual location out side of London that seems to be the inspiration for the mansion that is depicted within the pages.   

The three sections of the book are the stories of those women who are connected to the garden - Venetia Smith in 1907 whose creativity designed the garden,  Diana Symonds, who inherits the home and is living there during World War II, and Emma Lovell who was hired to restore the gardens in 2021. There were a multitude of characters that became associated with those women. This somewhat was puzzling to the reader because Kelly would use a woman's maiden name at times and it wasn't until about a third of the way into the novel that you could put this together. 

As a characteristic of those generational novels, it becomes part of the mystery to determine how the main players become connected. Kelly does a magnificent job in creating the mystery and then solving it in the end. There is a part of the gardens, The Winter Garden, that is locked with an iron gate. The only way Emma and her crew can work on it is to scale the walls. They do not want to break the lock thereby seemingly breach the work of a previous generation. The mystery of the lost key becomes a central part. Yet another mystery is the name Celeste that is found on one of the original Smith drawings of the garden plans. 

The women in this novel are strong-willed and for the most part trying to discover who they really are and what their place in the world is. When Venetia embarks upon a love affair with the brother of the owner of the garden, Mrs. Melancourt, she finds herself in a position where she must make some very difficult decisions about her life. She becomes a person who socially is well ahead of her generation. 

Diana Symond is the mistress of Highbury house at a time when it has been overtaken as a hospital for wounded soldiers during the war. Her husband, a prominent doctor, was killed in the fighting and she is left to run the manor, much to the dismay of her sister-in-law, Cynthia who is put in charge of the hospital. She has a little son, Robin, who develops a strong bond with the nephew of Stella Adderton, a cook in the service of Symonds. Also a strong character in the time of Symonds, s Beth Pedley. The three strive to find themselves as the war progresses and tragedy befalls them.

 Emma wishes to be a self-sufficient woman of the 21st century, asserting herself as a different person that what her mother thinks she should be. She has founded her own company and it is through that move that she begins work on restoring the garden for Andrew and Sydney Wilcox. Sydney is the heir to the property and is set on restoring it to its glory. As Emma decides that the garden work is more dear than a glitzy office job, she opens herself up to that permanent lifestyle.

This was just a wonderful read watching the characters develop and change and allowing the reader to immerse oneself in the beauty of the English landscape.