The Foreign Service Journal, September 2017

98 SEPTEMBER 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL headed and rational—the same situa- tion from afar as a journalist.” At times her depictions of spoiled diplomats grow stale, especially as she herself is living the same life she ridicules. But certainly any FS spouse can relate to her stories of waiting up for a husband who walks out the door during a crisis and reappears hours later, unable to share anything he knows about what is going on out there beyond the compound gates, where she’s been forbidden to go. Many spouses have their own horror stories of giving birth abroad, or evacu- ating a war-torn country on short notice, or even just trying to find one’s place and fit in at each new post. As a former newspaper correspon- dent, Schuster knows how to string together a story. The dialogue at times seems forced (can anyone really recall a years-old conversation, verbatim?), but the story itself will pull you in, whether or not you’ve been posted to any of the same countries as Schuster. Her path from an adventure-seeking teen full of angst and anger at her home- maker mother, to wife (herself a home- maker) and woman seeking her own individual purpose separate from that of her husband, is one that many who have married into the Foreign Service will recognize all too well. n Donna Scaramastra Gorman is a freelance writer and frequent FSJ contributor, whose work has appeared in Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor . The spouse of a Diplomatic Security agent, she has lived in Amman, Moscow, Yerevan, Almaty, Beijing and Washington, D.C., where she currently resides. Still thinking of herself as a tough war correspondent, she is surprised at the level of helplessness she feels as the fighting in Liberia inches ever closer to the capital while she is forced to stay inside, away from danger.