Simone Gorrindo Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Simone Gorrindo
Simone Gorrindo’s writing has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Magazine, SELF, The Christian Science Monitor, Longreads, The New York Times, The Best Women’s Travel Writing, as well as others.

She has received grants and fellowships from the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, the International Women’s Media Foundation, and the Georgia Council for the Arts.

She has a master’s degree in journalism and has a background in editing.

She was raised in the Bay Area by parents that had distinct counterculture leanings, having been born into the golden age of California where the college was affordable and rent was low.

But she went to any antiwar march, and wound up moving to New York City, putting herself through college at NYU and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

She was living with Andrew, her boyfriend, in Brooklyn, when he said that he wanted to enlist in the Army. This was not a total shock, since he’d earned his bachelor’s degree at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, read deep into philosophy, and was thinking about a life in military service.

She grew up a pacifist, so it was tough to adapt to moving to a military base in Georgia with a full time job as an editor and being a supportive spouse to somebody fighting terrorism overseas. Especially since moving to Georgia meant she quit her editing job.

During graduate school, she did some wok on women veterans from an outsider’s perspective. Now she writes from an insider’s point of view. She has always longed for a sense of home, and she has found it through writing her book. Writing is a safe place that she has if everything else is falling apart. Her relationships with her kids and husband and fellow Army wives matter profoundly, however they become much richer and more beautiful if she keeps an ironclad relationship with herself.

It’s her attention to her own calling has made it possible for her to live with her spouse’s.

She found that their bond became strained because of their arguments regarding the Army. Since it’s a lifestyle. Joining the military, when you’re not from this background is breaking with everything that you used to know. You leave people, getting on a bus and signing away your life, to some extent. Everybody (parents, siblings, and spouse) feel this on a visceral level. The Army will now be the most important thing in a person’s life, and there is nothing that can possibly supersede it.

And his leaving was especially scary since he was the steadiest person in her life. He is still is somehow the person Simone is able to rely on the most. Yet there have been so many times she cannot quite rely on him in the most fundamental of ways.

Writing “The Wives” provided a lot of healing for her marriage to Andrew by putting words to a lot of long held feelings, since she felt like she was always being abandoned.

In the book, she dives into the relationships that she had with fellow Unit spouses, including Rachel, a woman that lived across the street from Simone for several years and became one of her closest friends. Even though many of these wives defined themselves through kids and marriage, there was just something that drew all of them together: the Unit’s protocol and mission. They call themselves quiet professionals. They don’t tell other people where their husbands are, not even their own family members. They don’t share things on social media. However with one another, they could talk about all of the things they weren’t allowed to share with the outside world.

She has read widely, like a lot of writers and journalists, and in some areas, quite deeply. She talks about literature concerning the military with ease, possibly since her husband did a great deal of reading of his own before he chose to enlist when he was 29.

“The Wives: A Memoir” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2024. This is a captivating memoir which tells the tale about a woman’s experience of joining a community of army wives after leaving New York City job, and is a profoundly intimate glimpse at friendship, marriage, and the power of human connection.

Her husband joins up with an elite Army unit, Simone gets uprooted from New York City and is dropped into Columbus Georgia. With her husband frequently deployed, she is left alone to find her place in this world, up until she meets the other wives.

Simone gives the reader an intimate look into the inner lives of this remarkable group of women and this unflinching and tender portrait of a marriage. It’s an unforgettable coming of age story, a love story, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions which plague our country today. “The Wives” offers up a powerful and rare gift: a hopeful stitch in the fabric of a torn America.

This is a gorgeously rendered peek behind the curtain of military life and is a beautifully written and haunting celebration of found sisterhood. It’s written in such a way that non-military individuals can comprehend, and also allows for a connection for those people that do understand the life since you’ve lived it too.

The genuine connections Simone makes with other wives are heartwarming, and the relationship aspect with her husband was a highlight too. Since it’s told in such a way that feels like part real life and part novel, you find yourself being highly interested and engaged right from the very start.

Simone delivers the sort of memoir that gives you all of the feels, pulls at your heartstrings, and provides a glimpse at military life. Her writing is excellent in this and it’s incredible just how honest she is with her readers. She deftly explores themes of anxiety, patriotism, and gender roles. It was a glimpse into a world most don’t know too much about and is highly enjoyable. She does a great job of portraying the unique burdens military wives will face.