The author of The Ambassador's Wife, Jennifer Steil is the wife of an ambassador herself, and has managed to create a suspenseful and hopeful novel about Miranda, the new and somewhat unconventional wife of the British Ambassador to a small, war-torn Middle Eastern country.
Miranda is an artist and doesn't fit the traditional role of an ambassador's wife. Her husband, Finn, is steady and a source of her greatest happiness - along with her young daughter Cressida.
When Miranda is kidnapped one day along with two other women, she is separated from them and then held captive for months. Her only companion is an infant girl whom she is able to nurse and provide food for. The two owe their lives to each other.
Steil's writing is easy to read, although I did spend considerable time on The Ambassador's Wife, not wanting to miss a single word. The story is well developed and Finn and Miranda are complex people, which makes their story that much more interesting.
My uncle spent much of his career working overseas in various US Embassies, so I was interested in the way Steil depicted this, especially since she also has her own experiences as an insider at US embassies.
I'm hopeful that we'll hear more from Steil in the future, because this was a book I didn't want to put down, and am now left with a bit of a book hangover.
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