Married in Moscow: A Red-Hot Memoir in Cold War Times

A Wild Ride!Fast. Furious. Funny.On a hot August day at a Moscow airport, a mad Englishman arrives in a heavy sheepskin coat—carrying his guitar. A California wild child, who doesn’t follow rules, takes illegal photos and travels to areas “closed to foreigners”. Both are new teachers at the Anglo-American School in Moscow in 1979. And both have a lot to learn. They tell their story in two different voices.The world around them is rapidly changing. The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan and the US and UK boycotts the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics, nixing their NBC jobs ferrying film crews. The US Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran brings a bus full of kids—the sons and daughters of diplomats and royalty—perilously close to the Iranian border. Crises and dilemmas abound when Joann is arrested and detained in a forbidden city, a Far East seaport. A diplomatic incident ensues and Jim refuses to board the steamship bound for Japan.How do you live in a country, Russia, where most people can not and will not speak to you? The government suspects you are a spy and will monitor you everywhere!Only in Moscow do you dine with the US Ambassador—and Bob Hope visits the school. A five-year-old asks Bob, “How big is your garage?”How do you get married in Moscow when you have to? Joann and Jim get by with a little help from their friends—the teachers, correspondents, diplomats, dissident Russians, and even the occasional spy.40 of their photographs, dissident art, and Communist propaganda posters help bring Joann and Jim’s story to life in Moscow, Russia, and the Soviet Union in Cold War times, back in the USSR."The time is 1979, the place Moscow, and two intrepid young expats are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. International espionage, midnight rendezvous, romantic intrigue! What could be more thrilling? Travel along with Jim and Joann as they navigate the highways and byways of a now-vanished world in their fast-paced, riotous, and moving memoir of life in late-Soviet Russia."Marcia A. MorrisProfessor Emerita of Slavic LanguagesGeorgetown University Read more