A captivating memoir that tells the story of one woman’s experience of joining a community of Army wives after leaving her New York City job—a profoundly intimate look at marriage, friendship, and today’s America.

When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia—a town so foreign she might as well have landed on the moon. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone—until she meets the wives.

Gorrindo gives us an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. A love story, an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions that plague our country today, The Wives offers a rare and powerful gift: a hopeful stitch in the fabric of a torn America.

I usually prefer to read memoirs by people whose lives are completely different from mine. But at the onset of The Wives, our protagonist Simone Gorrindo’s world bears a lot of similarities to my own: she’s a woman in her late 20s based in New York City who works in book publishing, content with her shoebox apartment. That is, until her world is turned entirely upside down when her husband tells her he’s enlisted in the Army. And that’s where our paths diverge…

The Wives is the story of Gorrindo’s adjustment to life in rural Columbus, Georgia, where her husband is based and where, for months at a time, she has no one but the other Army wives to lean on. She goes to a book club, thrifts cheap furniture to fill her suddenly spacious house, scopes out a local coffee shop that reminds her of home, and struggles to find a renewed sense of purpose in a life so strictly dictated by her husband’s deployment schedule. All the while, she has no way of knowing if he’s safe.

Gorrindo writes with striking emotional honesty. Her loneliness is complicated, as is her relationship with her husband; she undoubtedly loves him, but can’t help but feel her own light has been dimmed for his higher calling. She worries about losing him. She worries about losing herself. The context here is specific, but the underlying question is universal: how much do we give of ourselves to the people we love?