In 1959, a Baptist pastor takes his wife and four daughters to the Belgian Congo, convinced he is bringing salvation to a land that hasn't asked for it. There, they will confront religious fervor, the unforgiving wilderness, and the awakening of a nation demanding its independence. Through the invisible threads that bind devotion to coercion, family to empire, faith to doubt, Kingsolver uses the voices of these five women to shape a captivating story about colonialism, resistance, love, and redemption. An uncompromising look at what happens when the sacred and the human collide in a territory where neither can remain untouched. A reissue of the novel that established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the great novelists of our time.