The Missionary's Wife

A Romance and Spy Story Based on Actual Events

De: Jonathan Barclay

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Based primarily on the diaries by the author’s mother, The Missionary's Wife is the intriguing, disturbing, and as-it-happened story of Jim and Alexis Barclay, who found themselves as citizens of the United States of America living in the neutral country of Venezuela, South America during the most difficult years of World War II. The Barclays had planned a life as missionaries, but the United States government (through President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States Office of Strategic Services or OSS, later the CIA), desperately needed American feet on the ground in Venezuela to monitor and fight against the then darkest scourge facing humanity — the Nazis and their accomplices, imperial Japan and fascist Italy. The Axis powers desperately wanted and needed what neutral Venezuela had in abundance — oil, iron ore, and natural rubber — to run their respective war machinery.

What better cover was there for the United States and its Allies from December 1943 through December 1945, than operative spies working as missionaries? And what a potentially corruptive mission for the Barclays — a mission that required lies, cheating, seduction, adultery, killing — and nerves of steel. Alexis Barclay was one of the most qualified and highly effective spies for the United States. She deeply loved and was trusted by both her American husband Jim and the German Nazi Major Jonathan Speer.

Within the Barclays’ story the book highlights attempts by the Nazis to take rubber and oil out of South America, and find safe havens within countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela for the European gold and artifacts stolen by the Nazis from Jewish families, Jewish places of worship, its communities and businesses, as well as the recently emptied treasuries of conquered countries such as France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

The book offers an emotional and thrilling ride of events for readers, including evidentiary support for alternative locations of tainted Nazi treasures that have so far eluded discovery.

Not about OSS Spy. About a cheating wife.

The only reason I picked this up was because I needed to read a book set in Venezuela for a reading challenge, and my available alternatives to borrow were on the history of Hugo Chavez. Maybe I should have picked that instead.

For starters, the info on this felt more like clickbait than the actual subject presented by the time I was halfway thru. It’s not about how a missionary wife was an OSS spy and how she helped the war efforts with her skill. It was actually about how she decided to have an affair with a then-Nazi, and friend of her husband while her husband was away working as an OSS spy.

The affair was often in romanticized detail (keep in mind this is about his mother. Ew), all while both the author and the cheating wife excuse the morality of this choice as ok and just something that was part of the situation they were in, or even manipulated CS Lewis’ writing to imply sexual boundaries are self-imposed. And then the husband knows about the affair and does nothing. Just lets his wife have at it and pretends it isn’t happening even with the guy sitting in the room. Insane.

The writing was bizarre. It is classified as a fiction book but half of it was actually nonfiction - the author stepping in to give backstory on the events or setting, or talking about his mother’s journal or opinions on her life. The dialogue in the fictionalized parts was forced and awkward and sometimes the flow of the plot made no sense.

I can’t believe I took this much time on this book to write a review but maybe it’ll help some other unsuspecting person like myself. All I left with was that Alexis was spoiled, selfish, and a disloyal and betraying spouse who did whatever made her happy, and I have zero respect for her.