Review ~ The G I Bride by Iris Jones Simantel

Penguin
Michael Jones
May 2013

In October 1954, Iris Jones makes an early marriage to US soldier Bob Irvine. Although only sixteen, she feels that she has met the man of her dreams and is prepared to leave behind her family in England. She crosses the Atlantic on the USS General  R E Callan, to start a new and exciting life in America, but the America of the 1950s is very different from the home she has known, and at first Iris struggles to cope with her marriage, and a baby. What then follows is the detail of Iris’s life as she copes with the loneliness of being trapped in a country where she is considered a stranger. Forthright and brutally honest, Iris doesn't shirk from telling it like it is – from the cramped living conditions she shares with her husband’s parents, through to infidelity, despair and overwhelming homesickness.

This is a follow up to Iris’s first memoir – Far from the East End and is a worthy continuation of this feisty woman’s chronicle of her life in all its glorious detail.

The G I Bride

Far From The East End

About the author

Iris Jones Simantel grew up in Dagenham and South Oxhey, before moving to the US with her GI husband Bob at the tender age of 16. She now resides in Devon where she enjoys wring as a pastime. her first memoir about her childhood, far from the East End beat several thousand other entries to win the Saga Life Stories Competition