The Poisonwood Bible" is a story told by the wife and four
daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes
his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry
with them everything they believe they will need from home, but
soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is
calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a
suspenseful epic of one family''s tragic undoing and remarkable
reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial
Africa.
The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political
chronicles of the 20th century: the Congo''s fight for independence
from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the
CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of
a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of
its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs
the story of her evangelist husband''s part in the Western assault
on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and
unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating
the story, by turns, are her four daughters -- the self-centered,
teenaged Rachel; shrewd adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth
May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who
arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s
Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their
father''s intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each
must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately
intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk
and personal responsibility.
Dancing between the dark comedy of human failings and
thebreathtaking possibilities of human hope, "The Poisonwood Bible"
possesses all that has distinguished Barbara Kingsolver''s previous
work, and extends this beloved writer''s vision to an entirely new
level. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial
literature, this ambitious novel establishes Kingsolver as one of
the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers.