“A Piece of My Heart” on stage in Manhattan Beach. The Manhattan Beach Community Church Theater should be commended for presenting a work that doesn’t merely entertain but rather induces us to reflect upon a rather painful and contentious period in our nation’s history. Based on the 1986 book of the same name by Keith Walker, which contains interviews with 26 women who served in Vietnam, Shirley Lauro’s “A Piece of My Heart” opened last weekend and depicts the dangers and horrors of war through the eyes of six women.