Author reveals her family's journey into the dark side of the American Dream in new book

For many authors putting the finishing touches to a latest work brings with it a sense of relief, but for Nuala Calvi a very personal weight was also lifted from her shoulders.

After making an emotional promise to her grandmother Margaret just before her death early in 2012 to tell her story, The Sugar Girls author felt a huge responsibility to do it justice. And with her latest book GI Brides now a Sunday Times best-seller she can breathe a sigh of relief.

To write GI Brides, Nuala, 34, collaborated once again with her partner Duncan Barrett, who co wrote their previous title, which tells the story of the women who worked at Tate and Lyle’s factory in London’s East End during the Blitz.

Nuala grew up knowing there was an unspoken secret from her family’s past, but it was only when her adoptive grandfather Patrick Denby passed away that the truth started to unfold.

‘As a child Patrick was quite simply my grandfather, but I knew there had been one before him,’ Nuala says. ‘It was an unspoken rule that we didn’t speak about it.'

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‘It was only after losing Patrick that my grandmother opened up more about her experience of being a GI bride during the Second World War. I began recording her story and what she told me really took me aback.’

'Having grown up in rural Ireland, in her late teens Margaret moved to London becoming a typist at US Army Headquarters in Mayfair.

‘This glamorous new world was a real revelation to Margaret,’ Nuala reveals. ‘She met a dashing American lieutenant who was a stunner but broke her heart.

‘On the rebound she met Captain Lawrence Rambo and ended up falling pregnant. In those days being a single parent wasn’t an option so they decided to get married and make a go of things and their daughter Rosamund was born in December 1943.

‘Lawrence was a clever, well-read man and he and Margaret had lots in common. He came from a plantation owning family in Georgia and she was quite excited about going to America, she thought it would be like Gone With The Wind.’

Within a short time though cracks began to appear in the marriage and it became clear that Lawrence not only had a seriously drinking problem but also a history of bad debt. In 1944 he was thrown out of the Army for defrauding the Red Cross and sent back across the Atlantic.

Shortly afterwards Margaret, by now pregnant with their second child, and little Rosamund followed him.

‘She was one of the very first war brides to cross the Atlantic,’ Nuala explains. ‘At the time there was no organised transfer for them and she travelled on the Mauretania along with German POWs when there were still U-boats in the water.

‘The ship arrived at Pier 89 in New York but Lawrence didn’t turn up to meet her as arranged and she found him drunk in a hotel. It wasn’t a dream start and he promised to change but Margaret soon realised life wasn’t going to be great.’

In fact Margaret was one of some 70,000 GI brides who ‘crossed the pond’ to join the American husbands they’d met during the war – but these long voyages were just the starting point of a much bigger journey.

The women had to endure indignities such as humiliating medical inspections and providing character references before they were even admitted to the US. For many the reality of their new lives as opposed to perceptions of a country they’d only previously seen on the cinema screen was truly shocking.

Margaret and Lawrence travelled across the country from his native Georgia to Ohio and then Atlanta as he struggled to cope with his alcoholism and hold down a job, and for her it must have been a bewildering and isolating experience so far from home.

‘Margaret was also forcibly separated from her children for a short time after Lawrence demanded his sister Ellen take them,’ Nuala explains.

‘She got the girls back but then her marriage became violent. A lifeline came when Ellen sent some money intended for Lawrence to her saying: ‘You might need this.’ Margaret booked herself, once more heavily pregnant, and her children on the first boat home.

‘Lawrence did follow her and for a short time they reconciled but nothing changed. He drank and withheld money from her and she was forced to go without food just so her girls could eat. By the end of 1946 they’d split for good.’

Lawrence never saw his three daughters again, returning to America, and Margaret went on to find her happy ending with second husband Patrick who adopted the girls and raised them as his own.

‘My grandmother was a survivor,’ Nuala says proudly. ‘She was brave enough to reinvent herself and ended up marrying the love of her life, but discovering just how much she went through was shocking.

‘In August 2012 after losing her I went to America to retrace her steps ending up spending several months over there, it was sort of like my own personal episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ and very emotional.

‘I went to a reunion of the War Brides Association and discovered family we didn’t know we had in Florida, as well as travelling to Georgia to see the house where Margaret had lived.

‘Lawrence had remarried and had two more children before he died in the 1970s and I came back conflicted as I’d got to know more about his bad and good sides. He was obviously someone who was very ill.

‘I now have a huge sense of relief over having brought Margaret’s amazing story to life and hopefully shedding some light on the thousands like her. This whole generation of women who took an amazing leap of faith and crossed an ocean to begin lives with men they hardly knew.’

GI Brides: The wartime girls who crossed the Atlantic for love, is published by HarperCollins, £7.99. For more visit: www.gibrides.com.