Ruth May Price Timeline & Summary

Young Ruth May spends her days running around the Congo and playing Mother May I? with the children. Cute.
One day, she breaks her arm when she falls out of a tree.
On the plane flight to the doctor, she sees Eeben Axelroot's sack of diamonds.
He threatens her: if she tells anyone what she saw, God will kill her parents. She believes him, because she's been raised by Nathan to believe that God would totally do something like this.
At some point, Ruth May stops taking her malaria pills and gets very, very sick.
Nelson, the Prices' houseboy, gives her something called a nkisi. If she thinks she's going to die, it will make her disappear and move somewhere else.
How's that for foreshadowing?
When a green mamba snake bites Ruth May, yep, she dies. And yep, she disappears into the trees.
In the final chapter of the book, Ruth May, or whatever energy is left of her life, talks to us from the trees. She watches her family and urges them to move on with their lives.