Reach for Poisonwood Bible

In 1959 an overzealous Baptist minister named Nathan Price drags his wife and four daughters deep into the heart of the Congo on a mission to save the unenlightened souls of Africa. The five women narrate the novel. From the outset, the attitudes of the five women cover a wide spectrum. The mother, Orleanna passively accepts the turn of events, as she passively accepts everything her husband tells her. Fifteen-year-old beauty queen Rachel resents her separation from normal teen life. Five year old adventurer Ruth May is both excited and frightened.It does not take long for this faith to begin to waver. The first sign that they have miscalculated the superiority of their way of life comes when Nathan attempts to plant a vegetable garden. His "demonstration garden" is intended to both provide food for his family, and to instruct the natives in simple agricultural principles that might save them from malnutrition. However, though his garden grows lush and huge, none of his plants ever bear fruit. It takes him several weeks to realize that his plants cannot bear fruit here, because there are no African pollinators suited to North American vegetables. The next, and much larger, blow comes when their live-in helper, Mama Tataba becomes so enraged at Nathan's insistence on baptism for the villagers that she deserts them. As Mama Tataba explains in her final burst of anger, the villagers will never agree to being dunked in the river because a crocodile recently ate a young girl in that very river.

Though the women are shaken by these events, and slowly affected by the culture around them, Nathan remains steadfast in his original goals. He refuses to give up the attempt to baptize the villagers, or to bend his will in any way. When the only English-speaking member of the village, the handsome young school teacher, Anatole, informs Nathan that the chief, Tata Ndu, looks askance at his proselytizing, and fears that a move toward Christianity will spell the moral decline of his people, Nathan becomes outraged and throws Anatole out of his house rather than trying to gather more insight from him into the traditional religious life of the village. Even when their situation becomes mortally dangerous, Nathan clings tenaciously to his mission. Though little progress is being made in Kilanga, tremendous shifts are taking place

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