“Storytelling is at the core of all human connection.” ~ Kristin Hannah
Kristin Hannah with Diane Carlson Evans
In her own words, Diane Carlson Evans is “an advocate for nurses and women who have served in war.”
This is an understatement.
Evans, born and raised on a dairy farm in rural Minnesota, served as a nurse in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. She is the Founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation (formerly the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project), and former President and CEO of the Board of Directors. (Read more HERE.)
According to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website:
There are eight women, all nurses, whose names appear on The Wall. Of the 265,000 women who served during Vietnam, nearly 10,000 military women served in-country during the conflict. Barred from combat, these women served in health care, communications, intelligence, and administrative positions. Civilian women served as foreign correspondents for news agencies, worked for organizations such as the American Red Cross and the USO, or served in other government agencies, such as USAID or at the embassy. (Vietnam Women's Memorial)
Evans was in Helena, Montana, on July 14, 2024, in discussion with best selling author, Kristin Hannah, who wrote about this time in Vietnam in her new historical fiction novel The Women. The Helena event, sponsored by the queer- and women-owned independent bookstore Montana Book Co., hosted nearly 2,000 attendees. Some of which – including me – lined up nearly two hours early for entry.
In 2020, Evans published Healing Wounds: A Vietnam Combat Nurse’s 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C. Evans was a vital reference for Hannah when writing The Women, so Evans asked Hannah, “What does fiction do that other books don’t?”
Hannah talked about pitching the idea of her book to her editor in 1996. Her editor – who had studied at Berkeley in 1969 – said “the country wasn’t ready” in 1996. By the time 2020 rolled around, Hannah said, she was “going to write the story whether the country was ready or not.” The first print of Hannah’s novel has sold more than 1 million copies.
During CoVid, Hannah researched and wrote.
“There are people still alive who lived it, so I needed a reader.” She started with Evans because of her own service in Vietnam and her own book. “I started stalking her, really,” she joked.
Kristin Hannah at Helena Civic Center
Evans, who had read The Nightingale and The Four Winds, reluctantly said in her Minnesotan accent, “I told her, okaaaaay, I’ll read it. If I don’t like it, I’m telling you.”
And not liking the book is something that happened. It started with the title (they wouldn’t tell us the first title under consideration), and Evans wrote a one-page letter to Hannah telling her all the ways she didn’t like the novel during its first drafts.
“This book blows,” signed Diane to that one-page letter.
Through the writing process and Evans’ feedback, The Women took shape.
The women as heroes
Remembrance of the women
Recognition of the women who served
Help readers understand the women were in combat
“We didn’t have to carry a gun to be a warrior, but we fought,” Evans said. Telling a story about a night near the Cambodian border when they were getting “rocketed and mortared.” The women threw their bodies over injured men, pulled them to the ground to cover them, to protect them, to save them.
“We went to Vietnam to save the men. To conserve the fighting force,” Evans said. “But nobody knew we were there.”
“If you didn’t see a woman in Vietnam, you were lucky. That meant you weren’t in the hospital,” Hannah added.
Hence, the title of the book: The Women.
Hannah stressed the importance of getting families to talk about the war.
“We don’t tell our own stories to each other enough,” she said.
For nearly 30 years, this book about the women’s experiences in Vietnam had been bouncing around in Hannah’s mind. Now, it’s published.
“We are ready for this story,” Hannah said. “How great a book about women is doing that.”
Hannah and Evans
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