Kristin Hannah wanted to write about Vietnam for years. Why 'The Women' was her way in

Kristin Hannah's latest novel is called "The Women," but the title rings true for all of her novels. From ”The Nightingale” to “The Four Winds,” a Read With Jenna pick, Hannah has become known for writing epics focused on women characters caught up in the swell of history.

“What I’ve learned is what I should have known, and what I should have been taught: Women are incredibly resilient, courageous and daring,” Hannah tells TODAY.com. “They’ve done amazing things throughout history to keep their children alive and against forces trying to take things away from them or hurt them.”

"The Women" is different in that its character signs up for difficulty, rather than having those situations thrust on her.

Whereas past characters have found themselves in turmoil through circumstances such as cancer diagnoses ("Firefly Lane") or abrupt moves to Alaska ("The Great Alone"), Francesca “Frankie” McGrath walks — or, rather, flies — directly there.

Frankie is a 20-year-old girl raised to believe that nursing school is a holding period between her real task: Getting married and starting a family. But it's the 1960s, and all the men she knows are being drafted to fight in Vietnam, including her brother.

Soon, due to a surprising twist that happens early in the story, Frankie feels compelled to go to Vietnam herself. She becomes one of Army’s women nurses, who have been largely forgotten from the narrative of the Vietnam War. More than 265,000 women served in the military during Vietnam, and 11,000 actually served in Vietnam, per the VA. Of those 11,000 women, 90% were nurses like Frankie.

Nothing can prepare Frankie for the brutality she finds in Vietnam, far from the glory of the battlefield her father spoke about.

As a writer, Hannah says she's driven by asking: "What would I do in this instance? How would I rise to this challenge?" In the case of "The Women," Hannah doubts that she would have been able to handle what her characters did.

“I would not have been tough enough and strong enough to do this. That’s what I admire so much about them,” she says. "But history is full of women who don't think they're tough enough and resilient enough, until they're placed in that environment."

“I would not have been tough enough and strong enough to do this. That’s what I admire so much about them.”

The novel is split into two parts: During the war and after. The segments in Vietnam are grisly and raw, where the "life or death" is skewed, often, to the latter — and the paradigm also applies to the people doing the operating.

"It's intense reading it and it's intense writing it," she says. "In my head I sometimes think I'm a doctor because I've watch 'Grey's Anatomy' for so long. But this was different because this I had to actually describe them in a way that the reader felt they were there. They were some really difficult bloody, horrific moments."

A doctor and surgical nurses read through the sequences and helped take them to the "next level" of accuracy, she says.

Like other veterans, Frankie returns to the United States and finds that people don't want to acknowledge what she saw and did abroad. While she’s become an excellent nurse, she doesn’t have the proper professional experience to get a hospital job.

Frankie's experiences are directly informed by conversation that Hannah had with some women who served in Vietnam. There aren't many left. Hannah says many have since died from cancer, believed to be linked to Agent Orange exposure.

Hannah was invited to the Vietnam Women's Memorial on Veterans Day for the 30th anniversary of the memorial. She says meeting them, face-to-face, is when "everything changed" for her, and she realized the impact of her book.

"These women were so inspirational, powerful and honest. They had accomplished so much and survived so much. That's when I understood that before, the book had been important for me to write, because I wanted to tell this story. But I really began to understand, when I met them, how important this story was from their perspective," she says.

The book, and the real women’s experiences, has made her passionate about care for veterans.

“If we are going to ask men and women to sacrifice on our behalf and serve their country, we really have to take care of them when they come home,” she says.

"The Women" rounds out of a two-book exploration of the 1970s. Born in the 1960s, Hannah had long wanted to write about Vietnam, since her own formative memories are of the era. She remembered how her friend’s father had been shot down and never returned. They wore a POW bracelet with his name for “years and years,” she says. “It was always a reminder.”

Her previous book, "The Great Alone," followed an addled Vietnam veteran who moves his family to remote Alaska. But "The Women" addresses the topic more directly, which she only felt ready to do now.

“I think I finally got old enough to feel confident enough to take on such such a big, complex issue,” she says.

She hasn't started writing her next book, but she is reflecting on the "seven-year phases" her career has had so far, and says one is coming to a close.

Hannah began writing her first published book, a work of contemporary fiction, while she was on maternity leave from her law firm. Seven years after that was "Firefly Lane," and seven years after was "The Nightingale," a historical epic. That's when Hannah went from writing about the "resilient women she was surrounded with" to women in history.

"I was so surprised — and angry — to realize how much of our place in the historical landscape had been diminished, forgotten, marginalized," she says. "There were amazing stories of women who had done remarkable things. Shown great courage at great personal expense. And had many ways changed the way history unfolded."

These books, like "The Women", were written so women could "feel the collective power of all of us and reach for more, and demand more."

Still, while her characters are admirable, they're not meant to be one-note heroes. With all her questionable decisions, Frankie, she says, is an example of that.

"I don't intend my characters to be role models. I intend them to be full-blooded humans that maybe teach you something and entertain you. The point of being someone to emulate is that you are the kind of person who doesn't give up. No matter what mistakes you make, you do your very best to rectify them and to get back on the right path," she says.

As for what’s next? Her next chapter is unwritten, literally. "I'm in search of that magic idea at the moment," she says.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com