Embassy Wives are the wives of diplomats who follow their husbands to foreign postings, in this case Namibia. The book focuses on three wives: two from the US and one local. Persephone tries hard to be the perfect embassy wife, Amanda left a high paying job in Silicon Valley to follow her husband, and Mila is the wife of a foreign minister. They all have secrets and dreams and their lives and marriages are all a tangled mess. But the characters were well drawn and the story line and plot were good (although a little unrealistic at the end!). PBS describes this book as a suspenseful mystery. I would disagree with that description - it is more like a satire.