GI Brides

Last updated
GI Brides
GI Brides cover.jpg
Author Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi
Original titleGI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Subject Second World War, war brides
PublisherHarperCollins
Publication date
29 August 2013
Pages368 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0007501441
Preceded by The Sugar Girls  

GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love is a bestselling book by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, authors of The Sugar Girls . [1] It was published by HarperCollins on 29 August 2013. [2]

Contents

The book tells the true stories of four British GI Brides, women who married American servicemen stationed in their country during the 'friendly invasion' of the Second World War. [3] It is based on interviews with them, but written in a narrative style. [4]

Characters

Sylvia O'Connor – a volunteer at a Red Cross club in London who married a military policeman from Baltimore. She travelled to America by plane after he won the money for the ticket in a dice game. [5]

Lyn Patrino – who married an Italian-American lieutenant she met in her hometown of Southampton. After a stay at a transit camp in Tidworth, she traveled on one of the early war bride ships, and arrived in New York to find protesters waving placards that read 'English Whores Go Home'. [5]

Rae Zurovcik – a welder in the ATS who met her husband while stationed in Mansfield. While on the ship to New York, she was already doubting her decision to marry an American and wished that she could swim back to England. [5]

Margaret Denby – Calvi's grandmother and the inspiration for the book, who married a man from a land-owning family in Georgia. She had begun seeing him while on the rebound from another American.[ citation needed ]

Background

The authors researched the book during a three-month visit to America in 2012. They drove through 38 states and covered almost 13,000 miles (21,000 km) in their search for surviving war brides, and interviewed more than 60 brides and their relatives. [4]

Reception

On 15 September 2013 the book went into the Sunday Times bestsellers chart at number eight. [6] On 30 November 2014 a US edition went into the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. [7]

Related Research Articles

Jackie Collins English novelist (1937–2015)

Jacqueline Jill Collins was an English romance novelist and actress. She moved to Los Angeles in 1985 and spent most of her career there. She wrote 32 novels, all of which appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list. Her books have sold more than 500 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. Eight of her novels have been adapted for the screen, either as films or television miniseries. She was the younger sister of Dame Joan Collins.

Jacquelyn Mitchard is an American journalist and author. She is the author of the best-selling novel The Deep End of the Ocean, which was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club, on September 17, 1996. Other books by Mitchard include The Breakdown Lane, Twelve Times Blessed, Christmas, Present, A Theory of Relativity, The Most Wanted, Cage of Stars, No Time to Wave Goodbye, Second Nature - A Love Story, and Still Summer.

Carson Ellis American artist

Carson Friedman Ellis is a Canadian-born American children's book illustrator and artist. She received a Caldecott Honor for her children's book Du Iz Tak? (2016). Her work is inspired by folk art, art history, and mysticism.

Vendela Vida American novelist

Vendela Vida is an American novelist, journalist, editor, screenplay writer, and educator. She is the author of multiple books, has worked as a writing teacher, and is a founder and editor of The Believer magazine.

Adriana Trigiani is an American best-selling author of eighteen books, playwright, television writer/producer, film director/screenwriter/producer, and entrepreneur based in New York City. Trigiani has published a novel a year since 2000.

<i>I Was a Male War Bride</i> 1949 film by Howard Hawks

I Was a Male War Bride is a 1949 comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan.

Danielle Trussoni American novelist

Danielle Anne Trussoni is a New York Times, USA Today, and Sunday Times Top 10 bestselling novelist. She has been a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction jurist, and writes the Dark Matters column for the New York Times Book Review. She created the Writerly podcast, a weekly podcast about the art and business of writing. Her novels have been translated into 33 languages.

Anna David (journalist) American journalist

Anna Benjamin David is an American publisher, author, speaker, podcast host, and television personality.

Nancy Yi Fan is a Chinese American author who is best known for writing a series that currently consists of the novels Swordbird, Sword Quest, and Sword Mountain.

Paula Byrne British author and biographer

Paula Byrne, Lady Bate,, is a British biographer, novelist, and literary critic.

Brenda Hiatt is an American, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of romantic adventure novels, including traditional Regency romance, time travel romance, historical novels, contemporary humorous mystery, and most recently young adult science fiction romance. She has authored and published over 20 such novels in a writing career that started in 1988.

Lauren Belfer is an American author of three novels: City of Light, A Fierce Radiance, and And After the Fire. Her next novel, Ashton Hall, will be published in June 2022.

Lynsay Sands is a Canadian author of over 30 books. She is noted for the humor she injects into her stories. While she writes both historical and paranormal romance novels, she is best known for her Argeneau series about a modern family of vampires.

<i>The Ash Garden</i> Book by Dennis Bock

The Ash Garden is a novel written by Canadian author Dennis Bock and published in 2001. It is Bock's first novel, following the 1998 release of Olympia, a collection of short stories. The Ash Garden follows the stories of three main characters affected by World War II: Hiroshima bombing victim Emiko, German nuclear physicist Anton Böll, and Austrian-Jewish refugee Sophie Böll. The narrative is non-linear, jumping between different times and places, and the point of view alternates between the characters; Emiko's story being written in the first person while Anton and Sophie's stories are written in the third person. Bock took several years to write the novel, re-writing several drafts, before having it published in August 2001 by HarperCollins (Canada), Alfred A. Knopf (USA) and Bloomsbury (UK).

Julia Stuart English novelist and journalist

Julia Stuart is an English novelist and journalist. She grew up in the West Midlands, England, and studied French and Spanish. She lived for a period in France and Spain teaching English.

<i>The Sugar Girls</i>

The Sugar Girls: Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle's East End is a bestselling work of narrative non-fiction based on interviews with women who worked in Tate & Lyle's East End factories in Silvertown from the mid-1940s onwards. Written by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, it was published by Collins in 2012. The authors were inspired to write it by Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife.

Duncan Barrett

Duncan Barrett is a writer and editor who specialises in biography and memoir. After publishing several books in collaboration with other authors, he published his first solo book, Men of Letters, in 2014. Barrett also works as an actor and theatre director.

Debbie Ford was an American self-help author, coach, lecturer and teacher, most known for The New York Times best-selling book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers (1998), which aimed to help readers overcome their shadow side with the help of modern psychology and spiritual practices. In following years, she went on to write eight more books including Spiritual Divorce, Why Good People Do Bad Things, and The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse, which have sold over 1 million copies and been translated into 32 languages. She led workshops on "Shadow Process" and hosted TV and radio shows, and also established the "Ford Institute for Transformational Training".

Virginia Cowles American novelist

(Harriet) Virginia Spencer Cowles OBE (August 24, 1910 – September 17, 1983) was a noted American journalist, biographer, and travel writer. During her long career, Cowles went from covering fashion, to covering the Spanish Civil War, the turbulent period in Europe leading up to World War II, and the entire war. Her service as a correspondent was recognized by the British government with an OBE in 1947. After the war, she published a number of critically acclaimed biographies of historical figures. In 1983, while traveling with her husband, she was killed in an automobile accident which left him severely injured.

B.A. Paris Franco-British author

B.A. Paris is a Franco-British writer of fiction, mainly in the psychological thriller subgenre. Her debut novel, Behind Closed Doors (2016), was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. It has been translated into 40 languages and has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide.

References

  1. York, Melissa (4 September 2013). "GI Bride pair aim to fire our passions". Newham Recorder. Retrieved 6 September 2013.
  2. "GI Brides". HarperCollins. 2013. Archived from the original on September 6, 2013. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
  3. Myall, Steve (8 September 2013). "What happened to the GI brides? A new book reveals their stories and how they fared in America". Sunday Mirror. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  4. 1 2 Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi. GI Brides. Harper. p. 359. ISBN   978-0007501441.
  5. 1 2 3 Bohdanovicz, Kate (5 September 2013). "Meet the GI brides: Life wasn't the romantic dream for Brit women who married US soldiers". Daily Express. Retrieved 6 September 2013.
  6. "The Sunday Times bestsellers". Sunday Times Culture section. 15 September 2013.
  7. "Bestsellers". New York Times. 30 November 2014.