Starred review from February 19, 2024
Journalist Gorrindo meditates in her powerfully candid debut on the good, bad, and ugly of military marriage. When Gorrindo’s boyfriend, Andrew, announced in 2007 that he’d been thinking about enlisting in the Army since shortly after 9/11, she wasn’t sure she could handle being an Army wife. She married him anyway, and soon after their wedding, the couple moved from New York City to Columbus, Ga., where Andrew began basic training at Fort Benning. After he completed Ranger School, Andrew embarked on a series of deployments in Afghanistan, and Gorrindo struggled to contend with his absences. She found solace in other military wives in Columbus, who surprised her with their warmth and grit. Gorrindo writes lyrically and unsparingly about the difficulties of life as a military spouse (“People told us, from time to time, that we knew what we were ‘signing up for.’ But who really knows what she is signing up for?”), highlighting the loneliness and fear of widowhood that permeated her and her friends’ daily routines. She offers plenty of joy as well, from tender passages about giving birth to her daughter, Fiona, to moving, unsentimental sections about finding camaraderie within her diverse group of Columbus friends. It’s a haunting, beautifully written celebration of found sisterhood. Agent: Michelle Brower, Aevitas Creative Management.
Starred review from February 1, 2024
Years into their relationship, journalist Gorrindo's boyfriend Andrew vocalizes a desire to join the U.S. Army. They know that his enlistment might destabilize their relationship, but they reach an agreement, marry, and move from New York City to Columbus, GA, where Gorrindo first realizes the realities of being a military spouse: long separations during a partner's deployments, fear of receiving horrible news every time the phone rings, and navigating the complex social circle of other military wives. Her memoir begins in 2012 with the U.S. war in Afghanistan in full force. Even when Andrew returns from deployment, the angst-filled process of his re-adapting to home life is nearly as stressful as was his absence, and Gorrindo also feels hollow. Their marriage becomes a waiting game governed by training and service missions. When she gets pregnant, it increases the stakes. VERDICT A fearless, engaging, and important memoir about how one person's decision to serve in the military affects their entire family. Readers will learn the true meaning of military service through the wider lens of its impact on families and communities.--Jessica A. Bushore
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 1, 2024
Gorrindo and her husband did not begin their story as a military couple. They were living in New York City, Gorrindo working as an editor, when Andrew told her that he planned to join The Unit, a high-deployment, special operations team of the Army; the author's life was transformed overnight. They moved to rural Georgia, where Andrew was stationed between deployments, and Gorrindo set aside her identity as a writer, daughter, citizen, and friend. In order to survive, she let her life revolve around being a military wife. Even before deployment, Andrew was gone all the time, leading Gorrindo to seek the comfort and solidarity of fellow wives: a group of fierce and unthinkably strong women who manage the responsibilities of home, work, and children plus the strife of their husbands' constant peril. These women teach the author how to weather the contradictions and secrecy of the military and how to love, live, and grow despite it all. Gorrindo's memoir is a gorgeously rendered peek behind the curtain of military life, as she recounts reckoning with her husband's participation in violence--and examining why his job exists at all. Her family's sacrifices will leave readers thinking long after the final pages.
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March 1, 2024
The reality of marriage to a soldier. At the age of 28, newly married and working at a publishing house in New York City, Gorrindo was uprooted to Columbus, Georgia, where she assumed a new identity: Army wife. Joining the Army was her husband's dream. "If I have to choose between you and the Army, it's the Army," Andrew told her during a couples therapy session. By then, they had been together for four years; his words, she recalls, "hit me with the force of a physical blow." Nevertheless, their love prevailed, and in 2012, he began training at Fort Benning to join a rapidly deployable combat unit destined for Afghanistan. With Andrew completely consumed by the Army, Gorrindo was left to find her place in an alien culture. She was shocked that guns were everywhere, "on top of refrigerators, in nightstands, sometimes in every room of the house." She felt far different from other Army wives: Most were younger, some married out of high school, and many had young children. "We hadn't shared the cultural experiences that translated to everyday conversation," Gorrindo reflects about trying to connect with another wife. "Talking to her was a little bit like yelling across the deck of a boat in a windstorm." Yet the wives were all she had to counter her loneliness when Andrew was away for long stretches at a time--and when, even at home, he felt like a stranger. "The Army was changing him," she writes, "making the soft parts of him hard, the warm ones cool to the touch." Of course, there was also the constant fear that he would be killed. Only the other wives understood her anxiety, despondency, and frustration and, Gorrindo realized, "shared something significant: a core philosophy of survival." An intimate memoir of sacrifice and devotion.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.