The Missionary's Wife: A Romance and Spy Story Based on Actual Events, (Hardcover)

The Missionary's Wife is the intriguing, thrilling, and as-it-happened story of Jim and Alexis Barclay, who found themselves in 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), desperately needed American feet on the ground in Venezuela to monitor and fight against the then darkest scourge facing humanity - the Nazis, and their allies in Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy. These 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 the Allied powers from December 1943 through December 1944, 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. There was no spy more qualified and highly effective than my mother Alexis Barclay, the missionary's wife, who was deeply loved and trusted by both her American husband Jim, and the Nazi Major Jonathan Speer.