The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford by Thompson-Spires, Nafissa
The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford by Thompson-Spires, Nafissa

The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award-longlisted, "vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive" (George...
$31.20 USD
$31.20 USD
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Author: Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Subtotal: $31.20
The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford by Thompson-Spires, Nafissa

The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

$31.20
The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford by Thompson-Spires, Nafissa

The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

$31.20
Author: Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Description
From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award-longlisted, "vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive" (George Saunders) story collection Heads of the Colored People, comes a sly, spry, literary debut novel about the murder of an infamous moonshiner and the cacophony of true stories a small town can tell about itself.

Rich Milford is dead. At last.

We find ourselves in 1920s Oklahoma, just far enough out of Tulsa, just long enough after the Race Massacre of 1921. For as long as anyone can remember, the Milfords have led plentiful lives on the backs of the townspeople of Newville. Now, on the ominous brink of the Great Depression and at the height of Prohibition, Richard Milford was an infamous moonshiner and womanizer who, it seems, finally crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He's dead and buried with only his women to mourn him, but a question remains: Who killed him, and why?

Top suspects are his four "wives," Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne. But as their stories burst to light, the very idea of a true story comes apart before our eyes.

In an electric follow-up to her acclaimed debut collection, Nafissa Thompson-Spires once again serves up a brilliant distillation of front-of-mind happenings--think, cults of personality, capitalism run amok in politics, and rampant societal distrust--structured like a stupefying line dance. In her uniquely powerful, humorous manner, Thompson-Spires takes on the interdependent clash of the traditional and the newfangled in this gobsmackingly excellent novel.

Author: Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 10/06/2026
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781501168048


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/24/2026
Library Journal 09/01/2026 pg. 112
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/2026
Booklist 10/01/2026

About the Author
Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of the award-winning, National Book Award longlisted short story collection, Heads of the Colored People. She earned a doctorate in English from ----Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from ------the University of Illinois. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, New York magazine's "The Cut," The Root, The White Review, Ploughshares, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019, and The 1619 Project, among other publications. In addition to a debut novel, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Rich Milford, her young adult debut is forthcoming. She is the recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Grant and a 2019 Whiting Award.
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