Adah Ellen Price Timeline & Summary

Adah, the self-described crooked girl, spends most of her time in the Congo reading books, then reading them again... backward.
One day, she's devoured by a lion.
Well, that's what Tata Ndu says. There was a big misunderstanding, but she *almost* got eaten by a lion. So, yikes.
When Ants Attack: Adah, who never speaks, asks her mother to help her. Orleanna, who will never win Mother of the Year, takes Ruth May, her youngest, and leaves.
Adah does her best to escape the flood of ants. She falls, gets trampled on, and almost eaten—for real this time—but Anatole saves her.
When Ruth May dies, Adah follows her mother out of the Congo. They stow away on a banana boat (an actual one, not a bottle of sunscreen) and eventually make it to an embassy and back to the States.
Adah attends college in Atlanta, and eventually becomes a doctor-poet, like she always wanted.
She also goes through physical therapy and loses her limp.
Out of all the daughters, she probably has the harshest opinion of and the closest relationship with her mother. That's just how things go.