Persephone Wilder, a displaced genius posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia, takes her job as a representative of her country seriously and comes up with an intricate set of rules to survive a range of problems: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too much skin, how not to look drunk at embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace. She also suspects her husband is not actually the ambassador’s general counsel but instead a secret agent in the CIA. Ever the embassy wife, she takes the new trailing spouse, Amanda Evans, under her wing. Amanda Evans has just arrived in Namibia, mere weeks after giving up her Silicon Valley job, as her husband, Mark, has accepted a Fulbright. But once they arrive in the sub-Saharan desert, it becomes clear that Mark, who lived in Namibia two decades earlier, had other reasons for returning. Their marriage, which seemed solid in the safety of home, feels tenuous in the glaring heat of the Kalahari. Mark, it seems, has secrets born twenty years ago, and this journey is actually a quest to find a woman he left behind. When Amanda’s daughter becomes involved in an actual international conflict, lines are drawn in the sand, and it is clear that her own government won’t stand up for her or her daughter. Propulsive and provocative, this satirical page-turner compellingly explores the limits of human resiliency and loyalty.
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Katie Crouch was raised in Charleston, South Carolina. Though she trained with friends as a debutante, she never made it to the ball. She is the author of the bestselling books Girls in Trucks and Men and Dogs, and she has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Glamour, and McSweeney’s. She splits her time between San Francisco and Edisto Island, South Carolina.
Lauren Ezzo, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a commercial voice talent and Chicago-based actor and graduate of Hope College. She has acted in Peppermint Creek Theatre Company’s world premiere of Or You Could Kiss Me. Her narrations have placed her on several “Best of the Year” lists, including AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of the Year list. In 2018, she was part of a full cast of narrators nominated for the prestigious Audie Award for Best Original Work.