The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver · 1998

In 1959 the Baptist missionary Nathan Price takes his wife and four daughters to the Belgian Congo, where his zeal collides with the culture around him and with the country's slide toward independence and upheaval. The story is told in the alternating voices of Orleanna Price and her daughters over the following three decades.

Books mentioned in The Poisonwood Bible (8)

• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: “'The quote is from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which I have read many times.'”
• The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan: “'I had also recently read The Pilgrim's Progress and Paradise Lost'”
• Paradise Lost by John Milton: “'I had also recently read The Pilgrim's Progress and Paradise Lost'”
• Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allan Poe: “'the poems of Miss Emily Dickinson and Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allan Poe'”
• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: “'I am fond of Mr. Poe and his telltale Raven'”
• Hope is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson: “'When Miss Dickinson says, Hope is the thing with feathers, I always think of something round'”
• Stuart Little by E. B. White: “'I'm a-calling it Stuart Little. That is a mouse in a book.'”
• The Bobbsey Twins in Eskimo Land by Laura Lee Hope: “'I had nothing to read but The Bobbsey Twins in Eskimo Land, a childish book'”

Books that mention The Poisonwood Bible (1)

• Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver: “my friends at the Book Mark asked me to give the debut reading of my eighth book, The Poisonwood Bible, at their store”