The Healer’s War (original 1988; edition 1988)

It would be OK as purely a novel about the experiences of a military nurse in the Vietnam War but it was advertised as SF and won a Nebula so I was expecting more than just some tacked-on "magic aura" nonsense. Having said that, the military nursing story is quite interesting. ( )

Substance: Gritty realism with paranormal happenings. Based on author's experiences as a nurse in Vietnam. Valuable for her personal insights. Minimal (but standard) political references. Only nominally SF, because of the magic amulet; more accurately fantasy; not really either, but a biographical-fictional memoir.
Style: First-person narrative, mostly well done. Marred by a few foreshadowings more appropriate to Gothic romances, and not needed.
NOTES:
p. 76: the cheat of Vietnam: "But promises were being broken all around. Most of us in Nam were the children of the last war that was ever supposed to be fought anywhere in the world. All of the baby boys were promised that they would grow up and become successful and all of th baby girls were promised that someday their princes would come. Then along came the g-d- government and bingo, it sent the princes off to battle communism and issued them the right to hate anyone not in their unit. Then it sent them home in body bags, ... Where the hell did that leave me and all the other women?"
p. 77: war folklore passed around in hospital units: "I realized that some of those stories were nothing more than folktales the guys told one another to keep their courage up ..."
p. 108: dehumanization of soldiers (or letting them be themselves?), in re an 11-year-old girl raped by Marines: "Of course, I knew the enemy did horrible things to our people and to their own,. But they were the enemy. They weren't supposed to be civilized. I'd grown up with men like these, and they were supposed to know better. I despised any kind of training that taught them to be less than human."
(personal: my opposition to the war in 1969-70 stemmed from the perception, via the news, that US soldiers were being led to do things no man should be made to do; I bought into the propaganda that US soldiers in WW1 & 2 were preternaturally virtuous - even H. Nibley debunked that one - although the US Military as a whole is the most benign in history, after the Civil War, and are now taught to be effective without being vicious - when done right.)
p. 151: the new doctor who treats only American patients, not Vietnamese, even the allied ones; is this a more rational viewpoint? Kitty is utterly opposed to it.
(what would have happened in Vietnam if US had not intervened?)
p. 247: this war "is all so dumb"; war is hell; therefore, hell is dumb.
p. 262: demonizing your own people: child forced to walk through mines becomes a new recruit to VC, even though many of his community were killed.

p. 266: Colonel Dinh, while explaining why he didn't kill Kitty, after massacring villagers suspected of US collaboration:
"Live is not meant to return to a dead limb, and now that it does, it burns with the fires of hell."
p. 267: Kitty: "These people were assuming that I did the things I did because I was who I was, that i was making the amulet do what it did, instead of simply discovering what it would do as I went along....they thought I was sharing my power, not borrowing theirs."
p. 299: about helping yourself because no one else will (taking herself to Disneyland)
p. 303: finding meaning in life by helping others (the boat people as refugees in America). ( )

The Healer's War won the Nebula Award for best novel in 1989 which is a little surprising since it has only the barest fantasy element: an amulet that allows the wearer to see auras. It's really a Vietnam War novel from the woman's perspective. It follows Lt. Kitty McCully an army nurse at the hospital in Da Nang, as she's lost in the jungle, and when she gets home. Kitty treats each person she cares for as a person but comes to realize that because Americans can't tell which Vietnamese is the enemy, sometimes they hated all of them. She tries to keep her humanity during wartime, and it's almost impossible to do. Toward the end of the novel Kitty just wishes she could be home, and she realizes the Vietnamese are home and have no where to feel safe. While reading, I couldn't help thinking of the current mid east wars and how, even if the fighters come home physically intact, their humanity has to be impacted in devastating ways. ( )

Wanted to enjoy this historic novel but after struggling through 75 pages, just couldn't read any more.
I did not find the protagonist interesting and the story of the unfortunate Viet Nam citizens has been told before. ( )

This novel is one of a number of important science fiction works that grew out of the ambiguity and horror of the Vietnam conflict, fiction quite different in its outlook and tone from the more traditional (and still popular) military science fictional adventures, many of them populated by larger than life heroic figures. -- Pamela Sargent