Who is Nathan Price?

Nathan is a Baptist minister. He is married to Orleanna and is the father of Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. He takes the family to Africa as missionaries without the full blessing of the Mission League, who end up giving him a small stipend but not the regular pay. Kingsolver portrays Nathan as a hard man who is so entrenched in his own self-righteousness that he can't see reality around him.

Nathan's prominent characteristics are his self-righteousness, ethnocentrism, and his being oblivious of his family and their needs. He believes that he alone knows the right way to do things and that he lives life the way his god would want him to live it. He expects in others, whether his family or the villagers, a strict obedience to what he tells them to do. Orleanna says that he couldn't abide to back down or lose. He is stubborn and unwilling to change. Although the novel does not explicitly discuss it, Kingsolver suggests that he has hit Orleanna and the girls in the past.

When the family is advised to leave the Congo, Nathan refuses. He states that the family will stay until a replacement arrives, although there is no one planning to come. After Ruth May dies, Orleanna and the girls leave him in the village. Leah later hears that he was killed when a watchtower was set on fire. The villagers who did so believed that Nathan could turn himself into a crocodile to attack their children.