The Cubicle Next Door (41 page)

Anne,
newly married and with a university diploma in hand, finds herself unprepared for the realities of marriage, her limited job prospects, and people’s strange response to her.

Rachel
married beneath herself in terms of money but discovers she is bankrupt in relational skills. She’ll give anything to keep her shaky marriage intact.

Beth
resigned her commission to stay at home with her twins. How can she tell her husband that she thinks she made a mistake?

Karen
battles an eating disorder while she tries to ward off questions about her husband’s love, her lack of children, and her personal journey of faith.

In this compelling story of love, friendship, forgiveness, and truth, each woman discovers that with a little faith she can believe that yesterday’s heartaches and today’s troubles are nothing compared to what lies beyond the sky.

“Mitchell, a military spouse, looks at the lives of military wives through the eyes of four diverse women…Mitchell is at her strongest portraying the frustrations of women coming to grips with careers and motherhood (or infertility or pregnancy) and the challenges of military life. She is adept with flashbacks and withholds certain key bits of information until the right moment, which adds punch to the narrative.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A profoundly moving book…”

—Joyce Erwin, Senior Protestant Chaplain’s wife, Elmendorf Air Force Base

About the Author

Siri Mitchell graduated from the University of Washington with a business degree and worked in various levels of government. As a military spouse, she lived all over the world, including Paris and Tokyo. Siri enjoys observing and learning from different cultures. She is fluent in French and loves sushi.

But she is also a member of a strange breed of people called novelists. When they’re listening to a speaker and taking notes, chances are, they’ve just had a great idea for a plot or a dialogue. If they nod in response to a really profound statement, they’re probably thinking, “Yes. Right. That’s exactly what my character needs to hear.” When they edit their manuscripts, they laugh at the funny parts. And cry at the sad parts. Sometimes they even talk to their characters.

Siri wrote 4 books and accumulated 153 rejections before signing with a publisher. In the process, she saw the bottoms of more pints of ice cream than she cares to admit. At various times she has vowed never to write another word again. Ever. She has gone on writing strikes and even stooped to threatening her manuscripts with the shredder.

Her tenth novel,
The Messenger
, follows prior Bethany House releases:
A Constant Heart
(October 2008),
Love’s Pursuit
(June 2009),
She Walks in Beauty
(April 2010), and
A Heart Most Worthy
(March 2011).
She Walks in Beauty
won the inaugural INSPY Award for Historical Fiction in December 2010. Three of Siri’s novels,
Chateau of Echoes
and
The Cubicle Next Door
, and
She Walks in Beauty
were Christy Award finalists.
Love’s Pursuit
and
Kissing Adrien
were finalists for the ACFW Carol Award.