I Love a Man in Uniform (2009)

How does a girl who spent her punky, purple-haired teen years going to anarchist rallies, and her 20s working as an exotic dancer (see acclaimed 2001 memoir Strip City), manage to transform herself into an acceptable Army wife? In I Love a Man in Uniform, the cataclysmic events of 9/11 throw an already unlikely relationship — new husband Mike is a career military intelligence officer — into sharp relief, and Lily Burana, in engaging but occasionally exhaustive prose (everything you ever wanted to know about the condiment trays at West Point!), unspools her outsider's tale with both brutal honesty and refreshing irreverence. B+