The Women by Kristin Hannah
Week 6: Coming Home — The Hostile Shore
Read the chapters covering Frankie's return to the United States after her final tour.
Previewing Week 6 of The Women
Read 3 of 7 discussion questions below. Unlock the complete 14-week guide when you’re ready.
If the war is one kind of devastation, Hannah makes clear that coming home is another — and in some ways, the harder one to survive.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Frankie's homecoming is nothing like what she had been told to expect — or nothing like what the culture around her seems to think a homecoming should look like. What specifically greets her when she returns, and how does Hannah frame the shock of that reception?
2.The anti-war movement and the hostility directed at returning veterans is a painful and complex part of this era's history. How does Hannah handle it? Does she present the protesters with any nuance, or does the novel take a clear moral stance?
3.One of the novel's central arguments is that women veterans were doubly invisible: unseen by a country that wanted to forget Vietnam, and unseen even within veteran communities that centered male experience. How does Frankie begin to feel that double invisibility in these chapters?
a.How do the people closest to her — family, former friends — respond to what she has been through?
b.What assumptions do people make about her experience, and where do those assumptions come from?