The Women

A remark at Finley's going-away party rewires Frankie's future

On Coronado Island in 1966, twenty-year-old Frankie McGrath watches her older brother Finley prepare to ship out for Vietnam.

A remark at Finley's going-away party rewires Frankie's future

On Coronado Island in 1966, twenty-year-old Frankie McGrath watches her older brother Finley prepare to ship out for Vietnam. At his lavish bon voyage party, she slips into her father's office and finds herself staring at the family's heroes' wall—generations of military men, medals, and flags, no women represented except in wedding photos. Rye Walsh, Finley's best friend from the Naval Academy, follows her in and remarks that women can be heroes too. For a girl raised by nuns and a society mother to believe her destiny is marriage and motherhood, the words land like a small earthquake. On the beach afterward, Finley admits he's scared but insists he'll be safe. Neither of them knows anything yet about the cost of war.

An amputee veteran's gratitude sends her to the Army recruiting office

Working night shifts at a San Diego hospital, Frankie encounters a young amputee in Room 107 who credits a nurse at an evacuation hospital with saving his life. His story collides with Rye's declaration about heroism, and something ignites—a vision of herself earning a place on her father's wall not through marriage but through service. The Navy and Air Force require two years of stateside experience before deploying nurses to Vietnam. Only the Army will send her after Basic Training. She signs the enlistment papers that afternoon. When she tells her parents, her father sputters that the men serve—not women. Her mother demands she undo it. Frankie expected pride. Instead she gets silence, horror, and the realization that the rules she grew up with apply differently to daughters.

Finley is killed in action before Frankie can ship out

Before the family can absorb Frankie's enlistment, two naval officers in dress uniforms appear at the front door. Frankie opens it. She's lived on Coronado all her life—she knows what officers at the door mean. Finley has been killed in a helicopter shootdown. No remains recovered. Her father stands rigid, voice quiet, asking questions that have no answers. Her mother curls into herself, repeating that he'd said it was barely a war. Later, on the beach, Frankie sits in cold sand trying to comprehend an empty casket that will hold another man's boots and helmet. Her mother finds her and whispers a single plea: don't go to Vietnam. But Frankie has already signed on. Something in her—grief, fury, duty—won't let her try to undo it.