Husband, Lover, Spy

Rating:
Summary: strange but true
Review: Fritz Stammberger found the perfect wife in Janice Pennington: pretty, not overly smart, unquestioning, and willing to marry a foreigner about whom she knew very little after a courtship of mere weeks...The perfect wife for a spy. Even before Pennington suspected her husband of a secret life there was plenty suspect about Stammberger. The guy liked to go off and climb big mountains solo, san oxygen, and when he couldn't get a climbing permit he'd enter sensitive, dangerous areas of the world illegally, hiking in through rough, unpatrolled country to bag peaks. This alone would (statistics prove) have guaranteed him a life span shorter than the one he actually lived as a captured spy. Pennington's story is poorly written (she's s spokesmodel, what do you expect?) and she doesn't get it that whatever her husband was up to, whether he was a spy or not it was illegal and he WAS NOT a US citizen--being married to one does not count when it comes to risky rescue and investigations. She barely consults her husband's country for help, preferring to spend years (during which Stammberger was apparently still alive) chasing after US intelligence officers who--obviously--couldn't and weren't required to hand over any information about a German national's activities in dicey area of the world. What is surprising is that Pennington gets any resolution at all--really. She reminds me of Gennifer Flowers--tenacious, if a little dim. A weird story that would be much more palatable if Pennington had gotten a ghost author to help her with her 8th grade prose.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: I loved this book. It was so strange I actually read it twice and it was better the second go-round. The most interesting part of the book was the fact that Pennington's Husband was alive long after he left America and no one would really help in the search. Well written...yes but a little too dramatic at times. Don't let this stop you from reading this great book.

Rating:
Summary: Husband, Lover , Spy
Review: Whenever we look at celebrities, we think of their looks, their clothes, their wealth. We don't think much of them as people. We don't think they have to take out the garbage, do their own taxes, we don't think of them as having or capable of having the same emotions or going through an ordeal that never leaves us--the loss of a loved one and the struggle to rebuild a life. Janice Pennington not only endured this, but also summoned the courage to face the demons that accompany that searing kind of experience and then went on to smile each day as one of "Barker's Beauties" and find true love again. Those of us who have been through a similar experience can read her book and think of her as a kindred spirit, a beacon of hope as we read of her battle to learn the truth behind the death of her first true love, who later became one with her and with her soul. These are the bonds that death truly cannot conquer, for in her story we can read of her determination and her ultimate indominatability as a human being. It is a lesson of bravery we can learn from.