Embassy wife reviews Embassy Wife

I am an embassy wife. I've never called myself that, but considering the alternatives of toity "diplomat's wife" or cringeworthy "trailing spouse," for the sake of a book review - I'll own it. I've leaned into this role for over ten years and four countries, reaping the benefits of travel and serving my country abroad. Some of this lifestyle is admittedly lavish: embassy wives get black books. Housing and schooling is generally paid for, allowing the paycheck to stretch much differently than it would in the U.S. (ie: hired help). We get invited to fancy balls and dinners. Sometimes we get to meet famous people and dignitaries. Others might have gotten to meet Wynton Marsalis or President George Bush. I for one, got to meet Katie Crouch. She's a mega babe.

However, embassy wives also capitulate to homesickness, frequent unemployment, and the exhaustion that comes with starting a "new" life every few years. It can be pretty intense trying to make friends and build a community in rapid succession when nothing is familiar. Limitations might be the high turnover of families arriving to and leaving post, where gatherings feel more like speed dating. Often, there's language and cultural barriers too. Just try ordering a taxi when the only vocabulary you know is from Duolingo. Or ordering a pepperoni pizza only to find there's no timeless, cured meat discs on top, but rather a pile of extra juicy pepperoncinos that have soaked all the way through the cardboard. Freedom of movement might be restricted to an embassy compound or to city limits because of crime or poor infrastructure. But, perhaps the biggest limitations are boredom and loneliness- particularly when there's no job or palatable hobby to pass the hours. Day drinking anyone?

That's not to say anyone should feel sorry for embassy wives (or husbands), it's just that all the parameters we constantly are forced to adjust to ultimately make us weird. Like, super weird, and it lingers a little bit more with each post. So much so, we forget how kooky this lifestyle looks from the outside. I had the honor of meeting and befriending Katie Crouch along with her daughter, son, and partner Peter Orner, who moved from California to Namibia as a Fulbright Scholar. The program is an outward facing part of the State Department. That was how Katie found herself in the middle of an embassy wives' coffee hour, freshly arrived not even days before. There she met a handful of us weirdos all at once: the Real Housewives of Embassy Windhoek only without the lady fights and spray tans. But we did have the chic hostess, ultramarathon athlete, yoga teacher, CrossFit junkie, and other assorted mom squads.

Katie's book was begging to be written. How could it not?

Embassy Wife makes for a quirky perspective of diplomatic life, where "two women abroad search for the truth about their husbands—and their country." It's tall-taleish and funny, but the story goes beyond the notion of entitled spouses spreading hot goss and drama of who's the secret agent. The true heart of the story comes from the cultural exchanges that the supporting characters allow us to see. The housekeepers keep the reader grounded as they astutely observe the Americans agonizing over abundance of choices with menu planning, or the helplessness of a sad, whiny, white man who'd been robbed and feels like the end of the world. "And to have no money, that is a problem. But you are white. There's always more." After that smackdown, he figured out how to get over himself.

Mila's story could stand alone. Her past wrought with racism, poverty, and heartbreak, should have led her down a different path. She should have failed, fading into the Namibian landscape. But we get to meet her her as a domineering wife to a high ranking government official and in between then and now, the we get to understand a little bit about what it's like to be raised in one of the many Namibian cultures. The more Mila opens to her American characters, the more we get to see too. She shares hard moments of living in constant danger from wild animals, heat, drought. These moments feel very private, intimate - especially for someone who embraced Namibia in a manner just like the rest of the embassy wives: privileged. It's not something I to take for granted.

Serious homage aside, the book is antic and fun. I laughed and smirked my way through each page. Most of all, it made me miss the country and the people in it.

Embassy Wife on an embassy couch.