In 1965, Josephine “Jo” McGrath grew up beneath her family’s gilded “Heroes Wall” in Coronado, California—a shrine to generations of men who’d served and died in wars they were told mattered. But when her golden boy brother, Finn, ships out to Vietnam, Jo defies her parents, her country’s expectations, and her fears by enlisting in the Army Nurse Corps. She arrives in Saigon armed with idealism and a nurse’s cap, only to discover a war that devours both.

In the sweltering chaos of the 24th Evacuation Hospital, Jo learns to stanch wounds, stomach the stench of burning flesh, and make split-second choices that haunt her long after the helicopters fall silent. She finds solace in the women the world refuses to see: Lena Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American nurse battling prejudice on both sides of the conflict; Eileen Harper, a hardened lieutenant whose icy exterior hides a furnace of regrets; and the ghosts of nurses like Ellie Carter, whose names vanish from official records. Together, they forge a sisterhood in the smoke, stitching soldiers back together while their lives fray at the edges. But survival in Vietnam is only the first battle.

Returning home to a fractured America, Jo confronts a nation desperate to forget the war—and the women who fought it. Her service records are erased, her trauma dismissed as hysteria, and her brother Finn, now a shattered addict, drowns in the same guilt that threatens to consume her.

When Jo uncovers a VA conspiracy to silence hundreds of women veterans, she embarks on a dangerous quest to resurrect their stories, from the jungles of the Mekong Delta to the protest-choked streets of 1970s California. Her journey forces her to reconcile the brother she idolized with the man he became, to confront her own role in a Viet Cong attack that slaughtered innocents, and to decide whether some truths are better left buried.