[2] 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.

[4] Sylvia O'Connor – a volunteer at a Red Cross club in London who married a military policeman from Baltimore.

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'.

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.