The idea to write about nurses in combat zones in the Vietnam War came easy, novelist Kristin Hannah says.
The writing? Not so much.
“The Vietnam War was such a shadow across my childhood,” Hannah says of her earliest inspiration for her new novel, “The Women.” “My friends’ fathers were serving, and in fact, my best friend’s father was shot down and lost.
“I didn’t understand all of the complexities, but I knew that the country was angry and divided,” she says. “You know, we were watching the aftermath and what was happening in the war on a nightly basis. So it just made a really big impact on me.”
So around 1996, after half a dozen or so novels, Hannah decided to base her next book on women who served in the war.