As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes
in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the
Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on
the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends
missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The
Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to
find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher,
has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that
he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from
Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one
of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the
tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and
they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest
independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the
hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity,
there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get
any worse?

In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around
Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the
village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local
witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences
about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel
follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years.

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