50 Fun Facts About The Poisonwood Bible

In The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price means bängala to call Jesus what, though his accent turns it into a toxic tree?

Most precious is what Nathan intends, but said his hurried way the Kikongo word names the poisonwood tree, so every sermon ends by likening Jesus to a plant the villagers know to avoid.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which snake, left in the chicken house as a curse, kills young Ruth May Price?

A green mamba bites her as the sisters check the coop at dawn, and Leah later mourns her every January 17, the day Patrice Lumumba was also killed.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which parrot, left behind by the previous missionary, shocks the Prices with its swearing?

Methuselah is thrown out of his cage by Nathan but lingers near the house, and is killed on the very day the Congo becomes independent.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what keeps Kilanga's villagers from letting Nathan Price baptize their children in the river?

Crocodiles had killed a village girl in that river the year before, so to her neighbors Nathan's pleas sound like a plan to feed their children to the animals.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what overruns Kilanga one night, forcing the whole village to flee to boats on the river?

A column of ants eats everything in its path, and in the panic Orleanna carries Ruth May to safety and leaves Adah behind, a choice that haunts them both for decades.

In The Poisonwood Bible, how do the Prices fend off chief Tata Ndu's wish to take Rachel as a wife?

Faking an engagement to the pilot Eeben Axelroot spares the chief's pride, though the pretend courtship slowly turns into a real one.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what is the one thing Rachel Price grabs as her family flees the house one night?

Her mirror breaks at the riverbank when another family pushes her out of their boat. She gets through the crowd with a trick from a survival book: elbows out, feet up.

Which American novelist, who lived in the Congo for a time as a child, wrote The Poisonwood Bible?

Barbara Kingsolver was seven when her father, a physician, took the family to the Congo for a spell, though the novel itself is not autobiographical.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Nathan Price use to catch fish for Kilanga, killing far more than anyone can eat?

Dynamite thrown into the river yields a feast, but with no way to keep fish cold in the heat, most of the catch rots on the banks.

In The Poisonwood Bible, how does chief Tata Ndu have Kilanga decide whether to accept Jesus as its god?

A public vote is called in the middle of Nathan's own church service, with pebbles dropped into bowls, and Jesus loses by a wide margin.

In The Poisonwood Bible, how do the Prices get around the airline's baggage limit on their flight to the Congo?

Wearing extra layers, with household goods hidden underneath, gets each of them past a limit of 44 pounds, a trick suggested by their own mission league.

In The Poisonwood Bible, the Price family leaves which Georgia town to spend a year as missionaries in the Congo?

Bethlehem is where the twins were placed in a class for gifted children, to the unease of neighbors who saw only Adah's disability.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which housekeeper warns Nathan Price to plant his garden in mounds, and later quits?

Mama Tataba reshapes his flat beds into mounds overnight and he flattens them again, only to adopt her method after the first downpour washes his seeds away.

In The Poisonwood Bible, why do Nathan Price's Georgia vegetables grow lush in Kilanga yet never bear any fruit?

Nothing pollinates them, as Nathan works out after days of puzzling, and when Leah jokes that they should have packed bees he answers her in earnest.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Nathan Price denounce at the feast Kilanga throws to welcome his family?

Their nakedness draws a thundering sermon that compares the village to Sodom, and the hosts who had killed a goat in his honor drift away.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which brand of cake mix does Orleanna carry to the Congo for her daughters' birthdays?

Betty Crocker mixes are ruined by the jungle humidity before Rachel's birthday, and Orleanna's swearing over them is what the family parrot learns to repeat.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what punishment does Nathan Price hand his daughters when the family parrot learns to curse?

Copying 100 verses is his standard penalty, known in the family as The Verse, and each passage is chosen so that its last line names the sin he wants confessed.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which condition has Adah Price had from birth, leaving her to trail far behind her twin?

Hemiplegia leaves one side of her body weaker than the other, and Adah blames her twin, saying Leah grew strong in the womb at her expense.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which kind of wordplay fills the narration of the near-silent twin Adah Price?

Palindromes are her private language: she likes her own name spelled Ada, and she rereads finished books from back to front to find a second story in them.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Nathan Price wake up with after ignoring a warning about a tree in his garden?

A painful rash covers him after he handles the poisonwood his housekeeper pointed out, an early sign of how little notice he takes of local knowledge.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Ruth May break when she falls out of a tree while spying on drilling boys?

Her arm is set in a cast by a Belgian doctor in Stanleyville, who spends the visit arguing with Nathan about what foreign rule has done to the Congo.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Ruth May spot on Eeben Axelroot's plane and get scared into keeping secret?

A sack of diamonds is the first hint that the pilot is a smuggler, and he warns the child that her mother will sicken and die if she tells anyone.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what is the day job of Anatole Ngemba, who translates Nathan Price's sermons for Kilanga?

Schoolteacher Anatole is an orphan who worked in the mines as a boy, and Adah suspects his translations of the sermons say whatever he likes.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which animal does chief Tata Ndu announce has eaten Adah Price on her walk home?

A lion had in fact killed a bushbuck beside her footprints, and her survival fills Nathan's church with villagers impressed by the protection his god seems to offer.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which American playground game does the youngest Price daughter teach Kilanga's children?

Mother May I makes her the first of the family to win friends in the village, though the children tire of her bossing and drift away.

In The Poisonwood Bible, in which city, now called Kinshasa, do Nathan and Leah watch the Congo become independent?

Leopoldville is where they hear Patrice Lumumba speak on June 30, 1960, and where the Underdowns serve them a lavish last meal before leaving the country.

In The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price is haunted by missing which wartime ordeal that killed the rest of his company?

The Bataan Death March took his whole unit after he had been wounded and evacuated, and he came home convinced that God was watching him for signs of cowardice.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Orleanna find stuck to the wall behind her sick youngest daughter's bed?

Her quinine pills had been spat out and hidden for more than a year because of their bitter taste, which explains the fever that nearly kills her.

Which talk show host boosted sales of The Poisonwood Bible by picking it for her television book club?

Oprah Winfrey made an established writer a household name: the novel sold more hardcover copies than all of its author's earlier books put together.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what gift from Anatole does Leah master so well that Kilanga starts to call her unwomanly?

A bow and arrow, with lessons from Nelson, turn her into a fine shot, and her demand to join the men's hunt splits the whole village.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which earlier Kilanga missionary, married to a Congolese woman, arrives by boat with supplies?

Brother Fowles, known to the village children as Tata Bidibidi, or Mister Bird, leaves the family coffee, sugar and medicine after a tense scripture debate with Nathan.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which American president does Adah learn, from a pilot's radio, wants Patrice Lumumba dead?

Dwight Eisenhower gave the word, Orleanna works out years later, on the very day the family was marking Rachel's seventeenth birthday in Kilanga.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which American agency does bush pilot Eeben Axelroot boast to Rachel that he works for?

The CIA boast sounds like swagger to Rachel, but he does know of the plot against Patrice Lumumba well before it is carried out.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Leah Price kill in the village hunt, only for the chief's son to claim it?

An antelope, a young impala, falls to her shot, and when the chief tosses her a scrap of it she hurls the meat back, costing her family its share.

In The Poisonwood Bible, whose six-toed footprints reveal who planted the snake that kills the youngest Price girl?

Tata Kuvudundu, the village's traditional priest, means the snake for Nelson, as a warning after Leah defies custom by joining the hunt.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what do Nelson and the Price girls spread on the chicken house floor to catch an intruder?

Ashes show footprints by morning, a trick taken from the tale of Daniel that Nathan had preached, the same tale that names this part of the novel, Bel and the Serpent.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which shy forest animal does Orleanna come face to face with in the opening scene?

An okapi, a striped relative of the giraffe found only in the Congo, returns in the last chapter, where Ruth May says the family's passing saved its life.

In The Poisonwood Bible, the section title Bel and the Serpent comes from which part of scripture, dear to Nathan?

The Apocrypha is left out of most Protestant Bibles, and Adah later notes that one of its passages reads like a forecast of how her father dies.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which closing section is the only one narrated by Ruth May after her death?

The Eyes in the Trees ends the novel with her forgiving Orleanna and urging her mother to stop carrying the guilt of that morning in Kilanga.

In The Poisonwood Bible, to which city does Rachel fly off with Eeben Axelroot after the family abandons Kilanga?

Johannesburg suits her: she takes the pilot's surname without a wedding and joins white society there, while he collects a reward for rescuing her.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which Atlanta school does Adah Price talk her way into after escaping the Congo?

Emory takes her after she rides a Greyhound bus to Atlanta and bluntly tells an official she will need his medical school next.

In The Poisonwood Bible, where does Leah hide for her own safety while Anatole spends three years in prison?

A convent takes her in because a white woman is a danger to anyone who shelters her, and she fills the wait for his letters by working in its clinic.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which cause does Orleanna throw herself into after she returns to Georgia without Nathan?

Civil rights marches in Atlanta become her new calling, and she later raises money through Amnesty International to get food to Anatole in prison.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what business does Rachel inherit from her third husband and run as her own little kingdom?

A luxury hotel called the Equatorial, near Brazzaville, is where she ends the novel, proud of the pool she put in and puzzled that Leah never visits.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Mobutu rename the Congo, a change Leah and Anatole quiz each other about?

Zaire comes with new names for the cities too, and the couple test each other on the old ones so that the past is not wiped away.

In The Poisonwood Bible, which lavish 1974 event in Kinshasa enrages Leah while state workers go unpaid?

The Ali-Foreman fight, the Rumble in the Jungle, paid each boxer five million dollars, a sum Leah sets against a country where state wages had stopped.

In The Poisonwood Bible, how does Nathan Price die after villagers blame him for children lost on the river?

Burned in a tower he had climbed to escape the crowd, he dies years after his family left, and Leah breaks the news to her sisters at their reunion.

In The Poisonwood Bible, in which neighboring country do Leah and Anatole finally settle on a farming commune?

Angola appeals to them as a newly independent nation, and it is Adah who brings over the Land Rover meant to carry the family there.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does a market woman say when the Price women ask after Kilanga decades later?

It was never there, the woman insists, so the family never reaches the grave they came to mark for Ruth May.

In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Orleanna set her daughters to filling during the rainy season, to Rachel's delight?

Their hope chests, stocked with embroidery for future marriages, thrill only Rachel, while Leah frets that her clumsy stitches will cost her a husband.