Book Report on "Home Before Morning the Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam"

Book Report 3 pages (1058 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Home Before Morning: The Story Of an Army Nurse in Vietnam

The first chapter of Lynda Van Devanter's book Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam makes it clear that even though nurses who served in Vietnam were not formal combatants they still experienced the same trauma adjusting back to civilian life, long after the war had ended. Although Lynda begins her narrative in the present day, she is still tormented by night sweats and flashbacks. "Vietnam was the worst time of my life, yet it was also, in many ways, the most important and most intense" (Van Devanter 14).

The book is divided into three sections -- before Vietnam, during Vietnam and after Lynda's service overseas. When Lynda left for Southeast Asia, she was fresh out of nursing school, and had spent most of her life living in a sheltered suburban community. The first chapters of her memoir are devoted to a character study of herself as a young woman and America during the 1960s. Lynda was a somewhat naive, but tough-minded young woman who was insecure about her appearance (her nickname was 'Crisco' because of her 'big can') but confident about her ability to succeed in the world.

Lynda grew up in a Catholic household with a mother who was often ill and a loving father who raised her as the son he always wanted: caring for others was second nature to her, and she had been raised to be as tough as a man. Being an army nurse seemed like a natural extension of her family's values, as well as the ideals the Kennedy era. "I saw the United States pursuing a course that President Kennedy had talked about in his inaugural address: We are saving a country from communism. There were b
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rave boys fighting and dying for democracy" (Van Devanter 49).

As part of her intensive medical training at a rigorous Catholic nursing college, Lynda saw psychiatric patients and patients at the end of life -- but nothing could have prepared her for Vietnam. If anything, she was isolated from the culture wars raging outside, although she was more liberal than her father and had supported the civil rights movement. Her brief love affair with a soldier made her all the more determined to serve in the military as a healer.

The second part of the book details Lynda's somewhat giddy introduction into the army through basic training (despite the discipline, her friendship with her fellow nursing student Barbara, made the training seem almost like boarding school or a slumber party). Basic training left both women woefully unprepared for the psychologically harrowing experience of being in Vietnam. Lynda took an oath to serve her country, just like the men she would nurse, and faced the same risks as her male counterparts. Lynda was first assigned to the 71st Evacuation Hospital. Ironically, within hours of arriving in Vietnam, the first army nurse was killed. This coincidence was a stark reminder of how women were putting their lives on the line, just like their male counterparts. At first, Lynda supported the war, and wrote letters back home encouraging her parents to fly the… READ MORE

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Book Report for Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam written by Lydia Van Devanter

give the main thesis

summary of content: take each section of the book and summarize the important points in that section, and how it relates to the overall structure and content. The summary should be easy to follow and reflects the organization of the book. The summary should also accurately represent the point of view of the author of the book.Give proportional weight to each section. For example, if the book is divided into four equal sections, devote the same amount of space in your paper for each section. However, if one section is twice as long as another, you should devote more space to discussion of the longer section.

Please do not write a book review(analytical & persuasive)-this is simply a book report (summary)

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