The Women

by Kristin Hannah

“How come there are no pictures of women up here, except for the wedding pictures?” Rye asked. “It’s a heroes’ wall. To honor the sacrifices our family has made in service of the country.” He lit a cigarette. “Women can be heroes.” Frankie laughed. “What’s funny about that?” She turned to him, wiped the tears from her eyes. “I … well … you don’t mean…” “Yeah,” he said, looking down at her. She couldn’t remember a man ever looking at her in such a way, so intensely. It made her catch her breath. “I mean it, Frankie. It’s 1966. The whole world is changing.”

Why had it never occurred to Frankie that a girl, a woman, could have a place on her father’s office wall for doing something heroic or important, that a woman could invent something or discover something or be a nurse on the battlefield, could literally save lives?

The world changes for men, Frances. For women, it stays pretty much the same.

I imagine it would feel wonderful to be good at something that mattered. That is something that too many of the women of my generation didn’t consider.

That was one thing this war had taught her; there was never enough time with the people who mattered.

Maybe happy now, happy for a moment, is all we really get. Happy forever seems a shitload to ask in a world on fire.

Thank God for girlfriends. In this crazy, chaotic, divided world that was run by men, you could count on the women.

We were the last believers, my generation. We trusted what our parents taught us about right and wrong, good and evil, the American myth of equality and justice and honor.

Life was like that, she guessed; it was all wrong until suddenly it was right, and you didn’t really know how to react in either instance. But