#8 – The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver – 2024 Best Reads

2024 was the year I finally discovered Barbara Kingsolver after many years of Suzanne’s raving about her work. So early in the year I picked up her 1998 novel The Poisonwood Bible. It is a master class on writing.

Over 546 pages, Kingsolver unfolds the story of the Price family led by thoughtful and independent Orleanna and her bullheaded missionary husband Nathan. The two have four daughters ranging from 5 to 15 in age when they head off to revolutionary-era Congo in 1959. The course of their lives once there will both pull the family apart and give them a future in which Africa will nourish them. Though it is the American characters who narrate, the Africans come alive vividly in the tale.

The book alternates chapters between the mother and daughters, which allows for multiple windows on the events. The voices are delightfully distinctive, including one daughter’s knack for revealing malapropisms. And you do feel an epic sweep to the tale.

I was 25 years late to the book, but am very glad to have made the journey. The Poisonwood Bible makes the Best Reads list at #8.

Previous entries on the list:

#9 – Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty

#10 – Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson.