The active participation of Vietnamese women after 1965 tipped the balance between victory and defeat. It is estimated that the total number of women in the regular army of North Vietnam, the militia and local forces, and professional volunteer teams was somewhere near two hundred thousand. Women with training and education operated underground communications networks, staffed and directed jungle clinics, and recorded the war as journalists.

Others ran jungle liaison stations and ammunition depots, led and served in combat platoons, made coffins and burial cloths, and collected and buried the dead. Local militiawomen learned to shoot at American planes from factory rooftops and village fields, carried supplies, and treated the wounded - all the while maintaining agricultural and industrial production at prewar levels.

Karen Gottschang Turner traveled to Vietnam over a period of three years, researching, recording, and, above all, listening as the women warriors she encountered poured out extraordinary oral histories. By including military accounts, private writings, and the literature of Vietnam's American War, Turner provides a context for the words of those who lived it.