a five star prediction for me, but it was overall pretty good. a white Baptist preacher brings his wife and four daughters to the Congo to teach people about the truth of Jesus, but Nathan Price will stop at nothing to convert people to a religion and way of living they are reasonably wary of. there were some aspects that i had a hard time with. it's a story about Africa, written only from the perspective of white people. there's good enough reason for that and Kingsolver herself is white, so i understand why that choice was made. despite living in the Republic of the Congo as a young child for a brief amount of time, i didn't feel fully convinced by much of this book. it didn't really feel like any of our characters made huge changes to their belief systems throughout. Leah (the most redeemable in my eyes) still only made slight changes in her line of thinking and essentially just wished that she wasn't a white woman. the story itself did not feel cohesive enough, i wasn't really rooting for anyone, and i didn't love the pacing or trajectory of the story. overall, i'm glad to have read this, but i will continue to read books by authors who align more closely with the story they are trying to tell.